Vincent Dethier
Vincent Gaston Dethier | |
---|---|
Boston, Massachusetts | |
Died | September 8, 1993 | (aged 78)
Education | BA, MA, PhD Harvard University |
Known for | Research in entomology and physiology |
Vincent Gaston Dethier (February 20, 1915 – September 8, 1993) was an American
Biography
Vincent Dethier was born on February 20, 1915, in
In his 1989 autobiographical essay "Curiosity, Milieu and Era", Dethier attributed his interest in insects, which would become a central aspect of his research career, to a childhood encounter with a butterfly in a neighborhood park known as "the oval":
I had wandered up to the oval late one hot, humid, summer day. The long, slanting rays of the sun illuminated my white shirt. Suddenly, something rocketed across the street, made a few zigzags, and landed on my shirt, just above the pocket. I stood stock-still and slowly lowered my head to see what it was. There with its wings slowly expanding clung a brown butterfly with a red band extending down each wing. This red admiral was the first live butterfly I had ever seen at close range, and I was fascinated.[4]
Dethier received his undergraduate degree from
After the war ended, Dethier taught briefly at Ohio State University before taking a teaching post at Johns Hopkins University, where he taught from 1947 to 1958. He was a professor of zoology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1967 and then went to Princeton University, where for the next nine years he held the Class of 1877 Chair as Professor of Biology. In 1975, he returned to his native Massachusetts for his last appointment, the Gilbert L. Woodside Professor of Zoology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There he became the founding director of the Neuroscience and Behavior Program and chaired the Chancellor's Commission on Civility, publishing A University in Search of Civility in 1984.
Vincent Dethier was an active scientist and teacher until his death at the age of 78. On September 8, 1993, he had an apparent heart attack while teaching at the University of Massachusetts. He died later that day at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, survived by his wife Lois (Crow) Dethier and their two sons, Jehan Vincent Dethier and Paul Georges Dethier.[7]
After his death the University of Massachusetts established the Vincent G. Dethier Award for "the faculty member who best exemplifies the ideals to which Dethier aspired."[8]
Honors
Among the honors accorded to Vincent Dethier were election to the
Academic publications
Vincent Dethier wrote more than 170
- Books
- Vincent Dethier (1947) Chemical Insect Attractants and Repellents, Blakiston Press (8 editions published between 1947 and 1972)
- Vincent Dethier (1963) The physiology of insect senses, Methuen
- Vincent Dethier and Eliot Stellar (1961) Animal behavior: its evolutionary and neurological basis, Prentice-Hall (12 editions published between 1961 and 1970)
- Claude Alvin Villee and Vincent Dethier (1971) Biological principles and processes, Saunders
- Vincent Dethier (1976) Man's plague?: Insects and agriculture, Darwin Press
- Papers [10]
- Vincent Dethier (1937) "Gustation and olfaction in lepidopterous larvae", Biology Bulletin, 72:7-23
- Vincent Dethier and L. E. Chadwick (1947) "Rejection thresholds of the blowfly for a series of aliphatic alcohols", Journal of General Physiology, 30:247-253
- Vincent Dethier (1951) "The limiting mechanism in tarsal chemoreception", Journal of General Physiology, 35:55-65.
- Vincent Dethier (1954) "Evolution of feeding preferences in phytophagous insects", Evolution, 8:33-54
- Vincent Dethier (1957) "Communication by insects: physiology of dancing", Science, 125:331-336.
- Vincent Dethier and R. H. MacArthur (1964) "A field's capacity to support a butterfly population", Nature201:729
- Vincent Dethier (1964) "Microscopic Brains" Science, 143:1138-1145
- Vincent Dethier (1973) "Electrophysiological studies of gustation in lepidopterous larvae II: Taste spectra in relation to food-plant discrimination", Journal of General Physiology, 82:103-134
- Vincent Dethier (1980) "Food-aversion learning in two polyphagous caterpillars, Diacrisia virginica and Estigmene congrua", Physiological Entomology 5:321-325
- Vincent Dethier (1993) "Food-finding by polyphagous arctiid caterpillars lacking antennal and maxillary chemoreceptors", Canadian Entomologist125(1):85-92.
Other publications
In addition to his academic publications, Vincent Dethier wrote books on natural history for non-specialists as well as essays, short-stories and children's books, several of which he also illustrated. These include:
- Natural history
- To Know a Fly (1962) McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-07-016574-2
- The World of the Tent Makers (1980) ISBN 0-87023-300-9
- The Ecology of a Summer House (1984) ISBN 0-87023-422-6
- Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos (1992) Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-17577-8 (winner of the John Burroughs Medal)
- Children's books
- Fairweather Duck (1970) Walker
- Newberry, The Life and Times of a Maine Clam (1981) Down East Books. ISBN 0-89272-085-9
- Humor
- Buy Me a Volcano (1972) Vantage Press
- The Ant Heap (1979) Darwin Press ISBN 0-87850-034-0
- Philosophical essays
- "Fly, rat and man: The continuing quest for an understanding of behavior" (1981) in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 125
- Ten Masses: Impressions (1988) Alba House ISBN 0-8189-0537-9
- "Sniff, flick, and pulse: An appreciation of interruption" (1987) in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 131
- Short stories
- "Haboob" (1960) The Kenyon Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (anthologized in Gallery of Modern Fiction: Stories From the Kenyon Review, Salem Press, 1966)
- "The Moth and the Primrose" (1980) The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (anthologized in The Best American Short Stories of 1981, Penguin Books, 1982)
Notes and references
- ^ Gelperin et al. (2006) p. 4
- ^ Dethier (1989) p. 43
- ^ Gelperin et al. (2006) p. 1; University of Massachusetts Amherst (2009)
- ^ Dethier (1989) p. 45
- ^ Bowman (1995)
- ^ Gelperin et al. (2006) p. 7; Dethier (1989) p. 45
- ^ New York Times (September 11, 1993) p. 111
- ^ Hanson et al. (1995) pp. 139-148
- ^ Gelperin et al. (2006) p. 16; Entomological Society of America
- ^ This list of representative research papers spanning Dethier's career is based on Gelperin et al. (2006) pp. 19-21
Sources
- Bowman, John S. (ed), "Dethier, Vincent G. (Gaston)", The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, Cambridge University Press 1995. ISBN 0-521-40258-1
- Calisher, Hortense (ed.) The Best American Short Stories 1981, Penguin Books, 1982. ISBN 0-14-006135-5
- Capinera, John L. (ed), "Dethier, Vincent Gaston", Encyclopedia of Entomology Vol. 3, Springer, 2008, pp. 1186–1187. ISBN 1-4020-6242-7
- Dethier, Vincent, "Curiosity, Milieu and Era" in Donald A. Dewsbury (ed.), Studying Animal Behavior: Autobiographies of the Founders, University of Chicago Press, 1989. ISBN 0-226-14410-0
- Gelperin, Alan, Hildebrand, John, G. and Eisner, Thomas, "Vincent Gaston Dethier 1915–1993", National Academy of Sciences, 2006 (also published in Biographical Memoirs: Volume 89, National Academies Press, 2008. ISBN 0-309-11372-5)
- Hanson, Frank, Schoonhoven, Louis and Prokopy, Ronald, "In memoriam: Vincent G. Dethier", Journal of Insect Behavior, Volume 8, Number 1, January 1995, pp. 139–148. ISSN 0892-7553
- New York Times, "Vincent Dethier, 78, Professor and Expert On Insects, Is Dead", September 11, 1993, p. 111
- Entomological Society of America, Winners of the Founders' Memorial Award
- University of Massachusetts Amherst, Neuroscience and Behavior Program, Vincent G. Dethier Award, 2009