Roy Albert Crowson (22 November 1914 in

Hadlow Hadlow is a village in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, England. It is situated in the Medway valley, north-east of Tonbridge and south-west of Maidstone. The Saxon name for the settlement was Haeselholte (in the Textus Roffens ...

, Kent – 13 May 1999) was an English biologist who specialised in the

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

s. He lectured at the Zoology Department of the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

from 1949. He collected beetles and their

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e from around the world and studied the relationships between them. His 1955 monograph, ''The natural classification of the families of Coleoptera'', established a system for the classification of beetles that remains in use. His collections of British Coleoptera are in the

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, and his collections of world families, including large quantities of microscope slides and dissections, in the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The beetle genus '' Crowsoniella'' is named in his honour.

Family

Crowson worked closely with his wife, Elizabeth Anne Crowson, who was also a respected naturalist as well as a university lecturer in botany. They frequently collected and published papers together.

Works

* ''The natural classification of the families of Coleoptera'', Nathaniel Lloyd & Co., Ltd., London, 1955. * ''Coleoptera: introduction and key to families'', Handbooks for the identification of British insects, Royal Entomological Society of London, London, 1957
pdf
* ''Classification and biology'', Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, London, 1970. * ''Biology of the Coleptera'', Academic Press, 1981.

References

External links

1914 births 1999 deaths English coleopterists 20th-century British zoologists People from Hadlow Alumni of Imperial College London Academics of the University of Glasgow English curators {{UK-entomologist-stub