Born in Edinburgh and educated at Solihull School, King Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham, and Birmingham University where his father, a keen amateur Lepidopterist, was Regius Professor of Physiology. Carlier read medicine but never graduated. Although he was a delicate child he passed A.1 into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a Second Lieutenant during the First World War. Later in life he was a part-time lecturer in entomology in the Extra-Mural Department of Birmingham University Among his interests apart from entomology were philately, cut crystal glass and poetry.
In his obituary of Carlier in EMM, 99, 1963, 223, K.G.V.Smith noted that he 'devoted his life to entomology, at which he worked fantastic hours for very little financial reward... A vast amount of information must have died with him for he spent many hours in the field. The writer remembers field trips from which Carlier, who preferred to collect alone, usually returned with ‘prizes’ in most orders. With a smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes he would hand out glass bottomed boxes containing the day's rarities for us less fortunate collectors to inspect...'.
Carlier's particular interests were in Lepidoptera, Hemiptera and Coleoptera although his large collections also included other orders. The Coleoptera are now housed in the Birmingham Museum where they have been amalgamated with Blatch's collection, but from which the specimens may be easily distinguished by their labels. Other specimens collected by Carlier are in the Kauffman collection of Cerambycidae at Manchester. Carlier published a number of articles on Coleoptera of which the best known is probably his list of the terrestrial beetles of Hartlebury Common in Proc. Birm. nat. Hist. phil. Soc., 17, 1939, 193-201.
FRES (1924 – death); Secretary of the Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society (1937-1962); BENHS (1945 – death). (MD 1/O2)