Alexander Steven Corbet (8 August 1896 – 16 May 1948) was a British chemist and naturalist. He was educated at Bournemouth and the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

where he received a PhD in inorganic chemistry.Corbet, S.A. 2008. Philip's family background and early years ''in'' Agrion: Newsletter of the Worldwide Dragonfly Association – Special edition in memory of Philip Steven Corbet (21 May 1929 – 13 February 2008). May 2008 In the late 1920s he and his wife, Irene (''nee'' Trewavas), moved to

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = ''Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , sub ...

where Alexander worked as a soil microbiologist for the Rubber Research Institute of Malaya. There he became an expert on Malaysian butterflies, co-authoring ''The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula'' with H.M. Pendlebury in 1934. In 1931 he and his family returned to the UK and Alexander worked at the ICI research station at Jealotts Hill. He later became deputy keeper of entomology at the

British Museum (Natural History) The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum an ...

. The 1943

Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...

, Corbet, Williams paper on the

unseen species problem The unseen species problem is commonly referred to in ecology and deals with the estimation of the number of species represented in an ecosystem that were not observed by samples. It more specifically relates to how many new species would be discov ...

in ecology was a key contribution in the field of community ecology, and remains important to this day. Corbet had four children, two of which died in infancy. Both of his adult children acquired his interest in entomology: his son Philip Steven Corbet became an authority on dragonflies and his daughter Sarah Alexandra Corbet is an authority on British bumble bees and plant pollination.''Agrion: Newsletter of the Worldwide Dragonfly Association '' Special edition in memory of Philip Steven Corbet May, 2008 p.4http://worlddragonfly.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Agrion-special_Corbet.pdf . Accessed 2 Feb 2016 Alexander Steven Corbet died of heart failure in 1948.

References

1896 births 1948 deaths British naturalists Employees of the Natural History Museum, London 20th-century naturalists {{UK-chemist-stub

See also

References