René Edmond Malaise (29 September 1892 – 1 July 1978) was a Swedish

entomologist Entomology (from Ancient Greek ἔντομον (''éntomon''), meaning "insect", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study") is the branch of zoology that focuses on insects. Those who study entomology are known as entomologists. In ...

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...

and

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

who is mostly known for his invention of the Malaise trap and his systematic collection of thousands of

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

Early career

As an explorer he took part in an expedition to

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

between 1920 and 1922 along with Sten Bergman and

Eric Hultén Oskar Eric Gunnar Hultén (18 March 1894 – 1 February 1981) was a Swedish botanist, plant geographer and 20th century explorer of The Arctic. He was born in Halla in Södermanland. He took his licentiate exam 1931 at Stockholm University and ...

. Malaise eventually left the others and arrived in

Kamakura , officially , is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the tota ...

, Japan in August 1923, just days before the great earthquake on 31 August 1923 which he witnessed from a short distance before his return to Stockholm. He then traveled back to Kamchatka in 1924 along with his fiancée, the journalist, writer and explorer Ester Blenda Nordström and did not return from the Soviet Union until 1930. On 31 August 1925 Ester Blenda married him on Kamchatka. They would divorce in 1929.

Later life

In 1933 he married Ebba Söderhell, a teacher of biology and religion from Stockholm. Malaise then set out on another expedition of his own to northern

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

between 1933 and 1935, with Ebba accompanying him on the trip. It was here, in

Yangon Yangon, formerly romanized as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the List of capitals of Myanmar, capital of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the State Peace and Dev ...

(Rangoon) in 1934, that he had five insect traps of his own construction manufactured, effectively inventing the "Malaise trap". During this trip he collected some 100,000 insects, many of these totally unknown to entomology before Malaise's endeavor. Between 1953 and 1958 he supervised the entomological department of the

Swedish Museum of Natural History The Swedish Museum of Natural History (), in Stockholm, is one of two major museums of natural history in Sweden, the other one being located in Gothenburg. The museum was founded in 1819 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, but goes bac ...

Weevil collected in Burma by Rene Malaise

His only endeavor into

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

was his book ''Atlantis, en geologisk verklighet'' ("Atlantis, a geological reality"), in which he claimed that

Alfred Wegener Alfred Lothar Wegener (; ; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and ...

's theory of

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

was incorrect, that the migration of species has been helped by a sunken continent of

Atlantis Atlantis () is a fictional island mentioned in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and ''Critias'' as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world ...

, and he defended the "constriction theory" of paleozoologist Nils Odhner. It was widely ridiculed by the scientific community. In his later years he spent most of his time building up a large art collection, including works of

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

Sources

There is no written biography on Malaise, but Fredrik Sjöberg's essay ''Flugfällan'' contains several chapters with tidbits from the life of Malaise that he has found in different places.

References

External links

* Vårdal, Hege – Taeger, Andreas
The life of René Malaise: From the wild east to a sunken island.
''Zootaxa'' 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Malaise, Rene Swedish entomologists 20th-century Swedish zoologists Swedish art collectors Hymenopterists Swedish explorers Explorers of Asia 20th-century Swedish inventors 1892 births 1978 deaths