Biographical dictionary
The Biographical Dictionary of British Coleopterists was compiled by the late Michael Darby. The Dictionary can be accessed below, and see also the additional information provide by Michael:
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| Name | Dates | Biography | |
|---|---|---|---|
| GOODIER, Rawdon | Did a considerable amount of work on mountain inhabiting species in Wales which was published in Nature in Wales, 11, 1968, pp.57-67, and on leaving the country in 1968 donated 1000 Diptera and Coleoptera, many of which were mentioned in his work, to the NMW. Other specimens bearing his name are in the general collection at Doncaster Museum. Goodier worked for the Nature Conservancy Council where he reached a senior position. (MD 1/03) | ||
| GOODMAN, A. de B. | Published 'Observations on the life history of Scarabaeus' in Trans.SLENHS., 1927, pp.42-47. (MD 1/03) | ||
| GOODSIR, Harry | Mentioned by Murray (1853) pp.vii and viii: 'Our knowledge of the insects of the eastern part of the first of these counties [Fife] has been increased by the examination of a large collection made at St. Andrews by Mr Harry Goodsir, one of the surgeons of the unfortunate expedition under Franklin, which his brother, Prof. Goodsir, of the University of Edinburgh, kindly intrusted to me for examination.' (MD 1/03) | ||
| GOODWIN, Miss C. Wycliffe | Presented various insects including Coleoptera from Australia to the NHM in 1906 (1906/3). (MD 1/03) | ||
| GORDON, J. | Coleoptera collected by Gordon are in the Hall collection at Oldham (Information from Simon Hayhow). (MD 1/03) | ||
| GORDON, Thomas H.M. | Captured the first Kent specimen of Paratillus cars Newman in a bus between Maidstone and Sevenoaks (EMM., 96, 1961, p.220). I am grateful to Jonathan Cooter who has provided me with the following note about him 'Lived for some time in Kent, retired to (or whilst at) Bishopbriggs, in the northern suburbs of Glasgow. Left his collection in its home-made cabinet to the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow University, in turn presented to the City Museum and Art Gallery, Kelvingrove. Weak on small species, staphs etc., but contains some interesting species presumably obtained as duplicates from Massee.' Since the above was written Geoff Hancock has sent me a considerable amount of information about Gordon's collection including an account in the Glasgow Naturalist, 19(2), 1974, 143-144, by Ronald M. Dobson, of its donation to the Glasgow Natural History Society: 'The Gordon collection is the product of 54 years of study and contains approximately 1700 species of British Coleoptera... Representatives of about 700 of these species have been identified by the recognised authorities J.J.Walker, G.C.Champion, F.Balfour-Browne and A.M.Massee. Details of specimens thus authenticated are entered in a notebook kept with the collection [This still survives]. Species are arranged and named according to the Hudson Beare Catalogue of 1930 and 71 out of the 75 families recogised there are represented. Inevitably the coverage, though wide, is unequal. Amongst the important families, Carabidae, Dystiscidae, Coccinellidae, Scarabaeidae, Elateridae, Cantharidae and Chrysomelidae are well represented; Staphylinidae, Silphidae and Curculionidae are somewhat less so. 'Problem' families such as Scydmaenidae and Trichopterygidae are, as in most collections, poorly covered and this is also true of small species of Staphylinidae such as Atheta. The geographical origins of the collection are many and widespread. About one-sixth of the specimens came from the Clyde area and about as many from Kent. The remainder derived from various localities including Devon, the New Forest, Windsor, Delamere, Cannock Chase, Snowdon, Islay, Aviemore and Sutherland. All specimens have been carefully set and mounted on standardised cards and, in the great majority of instances, brief data on origin, collector and date are written on the underside of the cards. Precise details of locality and ecological relationships are, however, lacking... At present the collection is housed in its own cabinet, the handiwork of Mr Gordon himself, but in the course of time specimens may be transferred to fill lacunae in the more complete collections in the Department. All specimens transferred will, however, be given labels to indicate their origin and ownership'. A second article (19(6), 1979, 362) noted that the collection had been transferred from the Hunterian Museum to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Garth Foster has been through the water beetles and catalogued them in detail. Sample pages from his work indicate that the collection includes specimens collected by J.D.Leslie, E.J.Pearce, G.A.Hardy, D.Wotherspoon, A. Fergusson, J.J.Richardson, T.Edmonds and J.S.Sharpe. (MD 1/03) | ||
| GORE CUTHBERT, H.K. | See under CUTHBERT | ||
| GORE, H.J. | 1814 - 3 September 1889 | For many years the Rector of Rusper, near Horsham. This was the parish to which H.S.Gorham (see below) was at one time attached and Gore and he appear to have been friends (see, for example, Gorham diary entries for 1871). He was certainly interested in entomology by the 1860s for he was one of the original subscribers to the EMM. His brief obituary in this magazine records that he was an 'assiduous collector chiefly of British Coleoptera but published very little, (25, 1889, p.402). One article which I have traced was 'Cryptocephalus frontalis, Marsham' in EMM., 22, 1886, p.186. There are specimens collected by Gore in York Museum (I am grateful to Mike Denton for this information). (MD 1/03) | |
| GORHAM, Henry Stephen | 1839 - 22 March 1920 | Youngest son of the Reverend G. Cornelius Gorham, vicar of Brampford Speke, a well known divine and antiquary and party to a famous, successful law suit against Henry Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, in 1848, arising because the Bishop refused to institute Gorham to his living on the grounds of his alleged unorthodoxy in the matter of infant baptism. Gorham was educated at Rugby School and for ten years took up the profession of Civil Engineer in London. He then studied for the church at Lichfield Theological College and was ordained in 1865 to a curacy at Ilam. Subsequently moved to Needlewood, Bearstead, Enfield and Rusper before settling as Vicar of Shipley, Sussex in 1873. He remained there for eleven years before retiring to Shirley Warren near Southampton and, in 1905 to Great Malvern. His involvement in entomology had certainly developed by 1858 when he is listed in Ent.Ann. as interested in Lepidoptera, but by 1860 this had changed to Coleoptera alone. As a Coleopterist Gorham is probably best known for his work on tropical species particularly the 'Malacodermata' and Erotylidae, Endomychidae and Coccinelidae on which he published volumes in the Biologia Centrali-Americana series (1880-86 and 1887-89 respectively). The Endomychidae also formed the subject of another major publication Endomycici Recitai which appeared in 1873 (Gorham’s own annotated copy is in the NHM). Numerous shorter notes commenced with 'a note about Lepidoptera in Zoo., 18, 1860, p.6905 (seven years earlier than the first article which Tomlin in his obituary of Gorham in EMM. mentions) which was followed by a dozen or so others on British species until 1873 when most are devoted to foreign insects. (Three volumes of his published papers annotated by Gorham himself, are in the NHM). Gorham collected widely in the UK and exchanged insects extensively with other collectors as is recorded in his manuscript diary now in the Birmingham Museum (I am grateful to M. Bryan for making this available to me). The Diary, which covers the period 1868-1897, has formed the subject of a detailed series of articles by Jonathan Cooter: 'Rev. H.S.Gorham and some 19thC records' in ERJV., 90, 1978 pp.282-286; 91, 1979, pp.18-22,150-153 and 197-204. Cooter includes a portrait photograph (from the RESL library), illustrations of several pages and full extracts of many entries chosen 'as being representative but perhaps somewhat biased towards rarity and by personal opinion'. The diary is fascinating as providing a detailed insight into the activities of a dedicated Coleopterist in the second half of the last century. He received specimens from Gillo, Fowler, Lewis, Lawson, Matthews, Saunders, Hardy, Rye, Hodgson, Smith, Janson, Moncreaff, Lloyd, Walker, Blatch, Harris, Llewellyn and others, and collected with Sharp (a near neighbour when he lived at Shirley Warren), Champion, Gore, Stevens, Donisthorpe, Power, Gulliver, Brewer, Verrall and others. Cooter discusses the problems of relating the entries which detail some of the specimens taken, some of which were new to the British list (eg. Bembidium quadripustulatum and Oxytelus fulvipes), and received with the specimens in Gorham's collection. As far as Gorham's collections are concerned it is clear that they were of prodigious extent. In his obituary of Gorham in EMM. Tomlin states 'The extensive collections of beetles made by him, including that of the well-known artist Armitage (which was bequeathed to Gorham by its owner who died on 20 May 1896) have mostly passed into the hands of Continental or American workers. The Endomychids which included the Guerin and Deyrolle collections and contained many types, were acquired by the British Museum [NHM] in 1891; the Lycidae were purchased by Bourgeois and the Lampyridae by Olivier, these collections, on the death of their respective owners passing into the Paris Museum; the Telephoridae, Melyridae etc. were sold to M. Pic, the Coccinellidae to M. Sicard, and the Erotylidae, we believe to the Deutschen Entomologischen Museum in Berlin'. This account was published too soon after Gorham's death to mention the sale by J.C.Stevens of 111 lots of exotic beetles and books on 12 October 1920 which remained in Gorham's possession and which occupied more than 230 store boxes. Nor does it mention Gorham's extensive British collection which was passed via J.A.Dysson Perrins of Malvern to the Birmingham Museum in two cabinets of twenty drawers each (for many years the collection was on loan to the Geology Department at the University). Finally, another collection was acquired by the NHM in 1927 (1927-143) Smith (1986) p. 123 records that the HDO purchased at auction in March 1877 lot 286, 76 specimens (52 species) of Cleridae for 3s 6d, and that they also acquired in 1903 four examples of Erotylidae named by Gorham from the Congo and New South Wales. On p.77 she records that there are also in the HDO ‘Notebooks and miscellaneous manuscript notes, including catalogue of species and genera of Cxoleoptera described by him since 1873; album of photographs of well-known entomologists; two small flower paintings and a few letters’ The last including a letter to Westwood, 1882, in the HDO. In addition to the NHM's 1891 purchase which included 790 examples of 360 species including 149 types (but these figures also included Bates's types of Amphix as well as other material added by G.Lewis (letter Pope to Cooter 28 April 1977)) Gorham also gave at least six smaller collections to the Museum (1859/98, 1859/125, 1861/112, 1901/94, 1903/187 and 1904/15). In addition to his entomological interests Gorham also made extensive collections of stamps and coins - he was a well known numismatist."FRES from 1885; FZS from 1881; and a Member of the Societe Entomologique de France from 1887. There are portraits in oils of both Gorham and his wife Clara d’Orville Gorham by A.H.Smith of c.1910 in the NHM. I am grateful to Jonathan Cooter for the following additional information: 'Alas his collection is still on loan to Birmingham University. It contained, when I worked there in 1975, Ampedus miniatus Lectotype and 2 of the 3 British Cassida chloris (To use Gorham's name; the 3rd specimen is long lost). As a 'tool' in the Quaternary Geol. Lab. various specimens were dismembered so their component parts could be more easily matched to sub-fossil fragments. A great pity, more so as it is a good collection and much data can be tied up with specimens via the Diary...'. FRES from 1885; FZS from 1881; and a Member of the Societe Entomologique de France from 1887. There are portraits in oils of both Gorham and his wife Clara d’Orville Gorham by A.H.Smith of c.1910 in the NHM. I am grateful to Jonathan Cooter for the following additional information: 'Alas his collection is still on loan to Birmingham University. It contained, when I worked there in 1975, Ampedus miniatus Lectotype and 2 of the 3 British Cassida chloris (To use Gorham's name; the 3rd specimen is long lost). As a 'tool' in the Quaternary Geol. Lab. various specimens were dismembered so their component parts could be more easily matched to sub-fossil fragments. A great pity, more so as it is a good collection and much data can be tied up with specimens via the Diary...'. (MD 1/03)" | |
| GORY, M.H. | Presented 12 Coleoptera to the NHM on 23 June 1841. Perhaps related to A. and H.L.Gory see Smith (1986) p.77 for MS material in the HDO. (MD 1/03) |