Roy Crowson

Roy Crowson with two colleagues at the International Congress of Coleopterology of Barcelona in September 1989

Roy Albert Crowson (born November 22, 1914 in Hadlow , England; † May 13, 1999 ) was a British evolutionary biologist and coleopterologist whose main interest was the taxonomy of beetles . A number of taxa are named in his honor, including the genus Crowsoniella .

Life

Crowson graduated from University College London in 1936 and began research on the anatomy of beetles. Until the Second World War he was a research fellow at the Tunbridge Wells Museum . During the war he served in the Royal Air Force . From 1948 he worked at the Zoological Institute of the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in taxonomy. Crowson collected beetles in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the UK. With the collection material and the then largely new method of examining larval material, he succeeded in integrating the relationships between genera and families of the beetles into a well-founded family tree. In 1938 he wrote his first publication. His taxonomic publications in "The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine" between 1950 and 1954 made him one of the most recognized figures in the professional world. The work "The natural classification of the families of Coleoptera", which he published in 1955, is the basis for the classification of beetles to this day. He received numerous awards and honorary titles. He published a large number of articles, which he also wrote together with his students and colleagues from different nations. Thanks to good language skills, which also included Russian, he had an insight into the state of research in the Soviet Union and, for example, reviewed the most important Soviet identification book on beetles of the time, the "Fauna of USSR". He also maintained good contacts with scientists in India and Turkey.

Crowson also dealt with paleontology and researched insects from the Ceno and Mesozoic Era , but published only a few of his findings. However, he used these for his taxonomic studies because he not only wanted to describe the characteristics of the animals, but also investigated their development. He also tried to derive the separate development of closely related beetle families through their different ways of life. In 1980 he received the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London for continuing Linnaeus' tradition in biology .

He traveled to many countries and explored nature there, as he did around Glasgow and other parts of Britain. Crowson was married to his wife Elisabeth. He died of a stroke on May 13, 1999. After his death, the needled specimens in his collection, mainly Scottish species, were donated to the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow, the microscopic specimens and exotic specimens from the collection went to the Natural History Museum in London.

Publications

Crowson, RA 1981: The biology of the Coleoptera. Academic Press, London, 802 pp.
Crowson, RA 1970: Classification and biology. Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, London, 350 pp.
Crowson, RA 1967: (Reprint) The natural classification of the families of Coleoptera. EW. Classey Ltd., Middlesex, 214 pp.
Crowson, RA 1957: Coleoptera: Introduction and key to families. Handbooks for the identification of British insects. Royal Entomological Society of London, London, 59 pp.
Crowson, RA 1955: The natural classification of the families of Coleoptera. Nathaniel Lloyd & Co., Ltd., London, 187 pp.

literature

Quentin Wheeler: Professor Roy Albert Crowson 1914–1999. The Coleopterists Bulletin 54 (1), pp. 120-121, 2000.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Crowson, Roy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Crowson, Roy Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British evolutionary biologist and coleopterologist whose main interest was the taxonomy of beetles
DATE OF BIRTH	November 22, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hadlow , England
DATE OF DEATH	May 13, 1999