Donald Joyce Borror (24 August 1907 – 28 April 1988) was an American

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

and a pioneer of

bioacoustics Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science that combines biology and acoustics. Usually it refers to the investigation of sound production, dispersion and reception in animals (including humans). This involves neurophysiological and anatomical b ...

. He is famous for co-authoring a comprehensive textbook of entomology titled ''An Introduction to the Study of Insects'' which continues to be in print with newer editions. An entomologist with a specialization on the

Odonata Odonata is an order of flying insects that includes the dragonflies and damselflies. Members of the group first appeared during the Triassic, though members of their total group, Odonatoptera, first appeared in Late Carboniferous. The two comm ...

(dragonflies and damselflies), he also took a great interest in animal sounds and published numerous studies on bird vocalization. A longtime professor of entomology at the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, he was a fellow of the

American Ornithologists' Union The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

as well as the

Entomological Society of America The Entomological Society of America (ESA) was founded in 1889 and today has more than 7,000 members, including educators, extension personnel, consultants, students, researchers, and scientists from agricultural departments, health agencies, ...

. Borror was born in the neighborhood of Shepard,

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

, the second son of Reverend Charles H. Borror. He studied at

Otterbein College Otterbein University is a private university in Westerville, Ohio. It offers 74 majors and 44 minors as well as eight graduate programs. The university was founded in 1847 by the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and named for United Bre ...

before joining the Ohio State University from where he obtained a BSc in 1928, an MSc in 1930 and a PhD in 1935. During the Second World War, he served in the navy intelligence where he may have learned about the use of a "vibralyzer" a system developed by the Kay Electric Company (founded by former Bell Labs engineers Harry Foster and Elmo Crump) for generating visual representations of speech. After the war Borror took an interest in avian vocalizations and in 1947 he obtained a "portable", in that it had a handle, recorder that weighed 30 pounds and had a 250 foot long power cord. Along with Carl R. Reese, he was the first to publish sonograms (he called them "vibragrams") of bird calls in 1953. Over 15,000 animal sounds were recorded over the years and are now stored in the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics. In 1953, Borror published along with Dwight M. DeLong, a textbook of entomology that was highly influential. Later editions were written by additional authors Charles Triplehorn and Norman F. Johnson. Other books by Borror included one on Greek and Latin names in biology (1960). In 1970, Borror co-authored a very popular field guide to North American insects as part of the

Peterson Field Guides The Peterson Field Guides (PFG) are a popular and influential series of United States, American field guides intended to assist the layman in identification of birds, plants, insects and other natural phenomena. The series was created and edited by ...

series that remained in print for over thirty years.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borror, Donald J. American ornithologists American entomologists 1907 births 1988 deaths Ohio State University faculty Ohio State University alumni 20th-century American zoologists People from Columbus, Ohio