John Lawrence Le Conte

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John Lawrence Le Conte

John Lawrence Le Conte , also LeConte or Leconte (born May 13, 1825 in New York City , †  November 15, 1883 in Philadelphia ) was the most important American entomologist of the 19th century. He described and named a large number of insects, especially beetles.

Life

John Lawrence Le Conte, who came from a diverse family of natural sciences, was the son of the naturalist John Eatton Le Conte (1784-1860). In 1842 he graduated from Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg ( Maryland ), then in 1846 his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

He was interested in entomology from an early age. During his student days he published a paper on about 20 species of ground beetle on the east coast. Even then he made trips to the west of North America, so in 1844 and 1846 to Lake Superior , in 1844 to the upper Mississippi River and in 1845 to the Rocky Mountains . In 1848 he returned with Louis Agassiz to the area around the Upper Lake. Between 1849 and 1851 he toured California and explored the Colorado River .

In 1852 he moved to Philadelphia, where he lived until his death. However, he made many research trips, including to Honduras (1857), Panama and New Mexico (1867), Europe , Algeria and Egypt . The desert mocking thrush ( Toxostoma lecontei , English "LeConte's Thrasher") was discovered by Le Conte on the occasion of a beetle collecting trip to Arizona , and named after him by George Newbold Lawrence .

In 1861 he married Helen Grier, with whom he had two sons. During the Civil War , he worked as a surgeon and medical overseer and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. From 1878 until his death he was the managing director of the Philadelphia Mint (mint) in Philadelphia.

Le Conte was very active in the scientific societies of his time. In 1848 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He was vice president of the American Philosophical Society from 1880 to 1883 , president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1873 , founder of the Entomological Society of America, and founding member of the National Academy of Sciences . Since 1856 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . He was an honorary member or a corresponding member of over 30 scientific societies.

Le Conte published about 60 scientific monographs and two large basic works on the insects of North America. He bequeathed his collections to the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .

He founded the family of trout brook beetles Amphizoidae LECONTE in 1853 in the zoological system.

Fonts

  • Classification of the Coleoptera of North America (1862, 1873)
  • List of Coleoptera of North America (1866)
  • New Species of North American Coleoptera (1866, 1873)
  • The Rhynchophora of America North of Mexico (1876)
  • together with George Henry Horn : Classification of the Coleoptera of North America. Part II (1883)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl von Voit: John Lawrence le Conte . In: Meeting reports of the mathematical-physical class of the KB Academy of Sciences in Munich . tape 15 , 1885, p. 178–179 ( online [PDF; accessed March 2, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Le Conte, John Lawrence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES LeConte; Leconte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entomologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1883
Place of death Philadelphia , Pennsylvania