William Kirby (entomologist)

Reverend William Kirby ( born September 19, 1759 in Witnesham, England; † July 4, 1850 in Barham, Suffolk ) was an English entomologist and priests.

Life and work

Kirby received in Ipswich and Caius College, Cambridge, his training as a priest, which he completed in 1781. In 1782 he got the country parish of Barham assigned in Suffolk, where he lived and worked until his death in rural seclusion.

In his spare time he devoted himself with passionate zeal of natural science, especially entomology. His first major work was the Monographia Apum Angliae (1802 ), a multi-volume treatise on bees his home. This work, the first to be entirely devoted to this group of animals, sat in the scientific work new standards. Based on the Linnaean system, he described many new species he measured to the limited possibilities of his time describing amazingly accurate and detailed. It led to Linnaeus' genus Apis, although only a new genus one ( Melitta for kurzzüngigen bees), but its species already grouped in a manner which largely endures still in the form of today's genera. This work brought him great prestige in professional circles at home and abroad.

Together with his friend William Spence from Hull he wrote the four -volume work Introduction to Entomology (1815-1826), the first popular science book on insects in English. In this work, a detailed presentation of Entomology, Kirby also introduced a classification system, which dates back to the work of William Sharp MacLeay. In 1830 he was selected as the author of one of the Bridgewater Treatises; his theme was The Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural Theology.

In addition to these books he authored numerous papers in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, the Zoological Journal, and other magazines; to the works account of the Animals seen by the late Northern Expedition while within the Arctic Circle (1821 ) and Fauna Boreali - Americana (1837 ), he contributed the sections on insects.

For his services to the scientific method in entomology and the popularization of this science Kirby is also referred to as the "father of entomology ." His collections are preserved in the British Museum and the Linnean Society.

Kirby also published the theological writings strictures on Sir James Smith 's Hypothesis respecting the Lilies of the Field or our Saviour and the Acanthus of Virgil (1819 ) and Seven Sermons on our Lord's Temptations (1829 ).