INTRODUCTION

The American Mosquito Control Association’s (AMCA’s) John N. Belkin Memorial Award (henceforth Belkin Award) recognizes meritorious contributions to mosquito taxonomy and/or biology. The Belkin family established the award in honor of John, who was a world-renowned systematist specializing in mosquitoes. John Nicholas Belkin had a remarkable life, starting with his family’s flight from Russia, first to France and then to the United States. John lived through World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War. He started his entomological life at the American Museum of Natural History, thence proceeded to the Tennessee Valley Authority, Cornell University, the United States Army, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

John’s Army service was a seminal experience. He was placed in command of the 420th Malarial Survey Detachment in the Solomon Islands. It was during this time that he made extensive collections and developed the collecting, rearing, and data recording methods that are widely used today by culicidologists. In what surely must have been an unexpected turn of events, his native Russian language fluency led him to serve as the official Russian-English interpreter at the Japanese surrender at the conclusion of World War II. John Belkin’s Army duty also provided him with material for his Ph.D. dissertation, which was published after his discharge (Belkin 1950). John revolutionized the field of mosquito systematics. Many modern mosquito systematists in the Americas can trace their scientific lineage and methodology to John Belkin. His careful morphological studies and integration of biological and ecological information with morphology were groundbreaking at the time. He trained a cadre of systematists who solved some of the most difficult problems in mosquito taxonomy. His three huge projects, “Mosquitoes of the South Pacific,” “Mosquitoes of Middle America,” and “Mosquito Studies,” laid the foundation of modern mosquito systematics. These were massive undertakings, the South Pacific study resulting in a two-volume classic work (Belkin 1962), and the other projects generating a series of revisions, catalogs, and collection data (Gerberg 1980a, 1980b; Heinemann and Bryce 1980; Zavortink 1990). Among his many other works is a study of the mosquitoes of Jamaica (Belkin et al. 1970). The genus Johnbelkinia is named for him (Zavortink 1979), as are the genera Belkinius and Belkinomyia, the Belkini Subgroup of Tripteroides, and the species Culex belkini Stone and Penn, Deinocerites belkini Adames, Tripteroides belkini Baisas and Ubaldo-Pagayon, and Uranotaenia belkini Grjebine, as well as the synonymized Onirion belkini Casal and Garcia (= Onirion brucei [Del Ponte and Cerquiera]).

The Belkin Award is presented to the honoree after a stringent selection process. The John N. Belkin Memorial Award Subcommittee of the Nominations and Awards Committee selects a proposed nominee. According to the criteria for the award, the subcommittee may consider nominations submitted by persons not on the subcommittee. Once a potential honoree is identified, supporting documentation is delivered to the full Nominations and Awards Committee for consideration. If the nomination is approved by the full committee, it is sent to the AMCA Board of Directors for their approval. Generally, one award is made per year; however, there have been four occasions when two awards were made. The year 1986 was the first time that two awards were presented in one year. Two awards were again presented in 1996, 2023, and 2024. The 2023 awards were separate awards presented to two honorees in part for their service as coeditors of a textbook for university-level medical entomology courses, published by the Entomological Society of America (ESA) (Eldridge and Edman 2000). The 2024 award was a shared award, presented to a married couple in recognition of their lifetime collaboration. In 2007, 2009, and 2016, no award was made.

As of this writing, 46 individuals have received the Belkin Award. Most of the honorees have been from the USA (30). Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and South Africa are the home countries of two honorees each. The remainder are from Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Panama, Russia, Sweden, and Thailand. Nine awards (19.6%) have been made to women. Each of the honorees has made remarkable contributions to the fields of mosquito systematics or mosquito biology. With the passage of time, the collective memory is lost as people who knew the awardees retire or die. A mere listing of the recipients tells us nothing about who they were or why they received the award. Herein I hope to allow the reader a glimpse into who these people were and what they did to deserve such an honor. Citations to obituaries and biographies are given where I could find them. Names are listed first as they appear on the AMCA web page; in the biographical sketches are the full names as I have found them to be correct. A small number of articles written by each honoree (no more than three) is listed after each biography. Those that I have chosen to cite best represent, in my opinion, each individual’s work. However, the Belkin Award is conferred based on an individual’s total body of work, not for any single publication. Any eponyms are listed too; most of those for Culicidae were located in the newly published catalog by Wilkerson et al. (2021). Other eponyms were found via Google Scholar. In a few cases, eponyms for non-culicid taxa are mentioned when I felt it reasonable. I have not attempted to provide a full biography or bibliography for each award recipient. My intention is merely to give a glimpse into the work behind the names on the web. I have not written as much about honorees who are still alive, nor do I give personal information such as their birth dates. For some people, very little information was available. I have provided what I could find and that which I believed was prudent to disclose. Whenever possible I allowed each living honoree to review his or her biography prior to submission of the paper.

1981 B. DE MEILLON

The first recipient of the Belkin Award was the South African entomologist and parasitologist Botha de Meillon (1902–2000). Schalk Jacobus Botha de Meillon was a member of the prominent de Meillon family, which included artists and scientists. Botha worked for the South African Institute of Medical Research and did an immense amount of work on the Anopheles and black flies of South Africa. He also worked on bedbugs, ticks, and vectors of arboviruses and filarial worms. He was among the first, if not the first, to demonstrate the effectiveness of indoor residual spraying for malaria control. The Demeilloni Group of Anopheles is named for him, as are the mosquito species Aedes demeilloni Edwards, Anopheles demeilloni Evans, Culex demeilloni Doucet, Heizmannia Mattingly, and Uranotaenia Peyton and Rattanarithikul, and the biting midges Alluaudomyia demeilloni Clastrier and Wirth, Bezzia demeilloni (Haeselbarth), Bothamia demeilloni Meiswinkel, and Leptoconops demeilloni Clastrier and Nevill, the horse fly Haematopota demeilloni Stone and Philip, the subgenus Meilloniellum of Simulium, and the staphylinid beetle Oxytelus demeilloni Scheerpeltz.

1982 L. ROZEBOOM

Lloyd Eugene Rozeboom (1908–1999) was a leader in mosquito systematics, genetics, and evolution. Lloyd Rozeboom worked in Panama, the Philippines, India, New Guinea, New Hebrides, and Molucca Islands, Indonesia, among other areas. He studied the biology, taxonomy, and genetics of insects while researching insect resistance to insecticides. Lloyd served in the US Navy as a consultant on tropical diseases to the Secretary of War and to the US Public Health Service and worked on the mosquitoes of the South Pacific islands. He received the Bailey K. Ashford Award in Tropical Medicine from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene for his anti-malaria work in Trinidad. He was an exchange professor of parasitology at the University of the Philippines and a Guggenheim Fellow. He was a member of the faculty of Oklahoma A & M College and Johns Hopkins University. Lloyd amassed a remarkable collection of mosquitoes from all areas of the world. The mosquitoes Aedes lerozeboomi Reinert, Chagasia rozeboomi Causey, Deane, and Causey, and Tripteroides rozeboomi Baisas and Ubaldo-Pagayon are named for him, as was the now-synonymized Aedes rozeboomi Vargas (=Aedes bimaculatus [Coquillett]).

1983 K. L. KNIGHT

Kenneth Lee Knight (1915–2001) was described as “one of the premier mosquito taxonomists of the 20th Century, and an outstanding officer and gentleman in the finest U.S. Navy tradition.” He was the first entomologist in the first malaria-control unit deployed to the South Pacific. He helped to revise the Anopheles punctulatus complex and coauthored the invaluable reference volume A synoptic catalog of the mosquitoes of the world. After Navy service, Knight worked at the University of Iowa, the University of Georgia, and North Carolina State University. At the suggestion of John Belkin, Ken Knight began a newsletter for systematists and taxonomists working on mosquitoes; this eventually became the refereed journal Mosquito Systematics. Ken was the editor of this journal from its inception until 1979. Along with Jean Lafoon, he also began the studies that eventually became the Taxonomist’s glossary of mosquito anatomy, coauthored with Ralph Harbach (1980). Ken served as president of both the American Mosquito Control Association and the ESA, and he received the AMCA’s Medal of Honor and was elected an Honorary Member of the ESA. The mosquitoes Aedes knighti Stone and Bohart and Tripteroides knighti Baisas and Ubaldo-Pagayon as well as the subgenus Kenknightia of Aedes were named for him.

1984 T. J. ZAVORTINK

Thomas James Zavortink was a professor of biology in the University of San Francisco and is currently a research associate in the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California at Davis. Zavortink’s work encompassed many genera of mosquitoes; he produced two of the first monographs on the genus Orthopodomyia (his dissertation project, mentored by John Belkin), and he revised the treehole anophelines. From 1993 to 1995, he served as editor of the journal Mosquito Systematics. The subgenus Zavortinkius of Aedes was named for him, as was the species Aedes zavortinki Schick.

1985 S. J. CARPENTER

Stanley Jennings Carpenter (1904–1984) is best known for his monograph The mosquitoes of North America (Carpenter and La Casse 1955). He spent most of his career in the US Army, but also taught at Searcy College, Arkansas, and he worked for the Arkansas State Board of Health, the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco), and the California State Department of Health. While in the Army Colonel Carpenter served “stateside” and in Panama, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. Much of his time in service was spent teaching mosquito identification to other soldiers, one of whom was a young EL Peyton. After his retirement from the Army, Stanley Carpenter continued to study snowmelt Aedes mosquitoes. He received the AMCA Medal of Honor, and the California Mosquito and Vector Control Association adopted a resolution acknowledging his many accomplishments in the field of mosquito study. The phlebotomine species Psathyromyia carpenteri (Fairchild and Hertig) is named for him.

1986 P. MARKS AND J. REID

Patricia Marks (1918–2002) was an Australian entomologist whose full name was Elizabeth Nesta Marks. She was called “Patricia” or “Pat” due to her having been christened at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland. At some point, AMCA began listing her as “P. Marks” rather than “Elizabeth N. Marks” (Harbach 1993). Elizabeth was born in Dublin while her father was undertaking university studies there because there was no university in Queensland at the time. She made significant studies of the subgenus Finlaya and the Aedes scutellaris group. She retired as Principal Entomologist in the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. She described 38 species of mosquitoes as well as new species of fruit flies, true bugs, cockroaches, and ticks. At the time of her death, another 43 species of mosquitoes identified by her remained undescribed or inadequately described. In addition to her taxonomic and systematic work, she conducted a number of studies of mosquitoes as vectors of viruses. Pat received a number of awards and recognitions during her lifetime. The Queensland Institute of Medical Research appointed her an Honorary Research Associate upon her retirement. She received the Australian Natural History Medallion from the Field Naturalists’ Club of Victoria and the Queensland Natural History Award. Furthermore, she was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in the General Division. Before her death, Elizabeth Marks wrote her autobiography with the aid of Kathleen Cummings; it was published posthumously (Marks and Cummings 2004). The Marksae Complex of Culex is named for her, as are the species Culex marksae King and Hoogstraal, Mimomyia marksae Grjebine, and Tripteroides marksae Dobrotworsky.

1987 J. B. KITZMILLER

James Blaine Kitzmiller (1918–1995) was a professor of zoology at the University of Illinois and a professor of entomology at the University of Florida. He worked mainly on anopheline species complexes. Much of his work dealt with cytogenetics of mosquito species complexes. During his life, he studied the Latin, Greek, French, and German languages. He also was able to communicate in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and could read Russian and Dutch. In a monumental effort, he compiled the derivations of every species name in the genus Anopheles (Kitzmiller 1982). The subgenus Kitzmilleria of Culex was named for him.

1988 A. STONE

Alan Stone (1904–1999) worked on mosquitoes in the South Pacific during the Second World War. He began his career at Dartmouth College but most of his time was with the US Department of Agriculture. During World War II, he taught mosquito taxonomy to hundreds of Army, Navy, and Public Health Service entomologists. He was instrumental in the publication of the catalogs of the mosquitoes of the world and the Diptera of North America. He also published a history of Nearctic Dipterology. In addition to mosquitoes, he worked on horse flies and black flies. When no one was available to study tephritid fruit flies, Alan stepped in and produced a revision of the fruit fly genus Anastrepha that is still a classic reference. The biting midge Downeshelea stonei Wirth and the fruit flies Celidosphenella stonei Stuardo Ortiz, Tomoplagia stonei Aczél, and Xanthaciura stonei Aczél are named for him, as are the mosquito species Aedes stonei Knight and Lafoon, Culex stonei Lane and Whitman, Psorophora stonei Vargas, Tripteroides stonei Belkin, and Wyeomyia stonei Vargas and Martínez Palacios, as well as the now-synonymized Anopheles stonei Vargas (=Anopheles punctipennis [Say]), Heizmannia stonei Mattingly (=Heizmannia complex), and Uranotaenia stonei Bohart and Ingram (=Uranotaenia jacksoni Edwards). The species Aedes stoneorum Marks was named for Alan and his wife, Louise. The subgenus Alanstonea of Aedes was named for him as well.

1989 P. GALINDO

Pedro Galindo Vallarino (1917–2007) was a Panamanian who worked at the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in Panama City. He studied mosquitoes and birds in Panama. His work on mosquitoes was primarily on the biology and ecology of vectors of sylvatic yellow fever, although he also worked on other mosquitoes. Pedro Galindo published 97 papers, primarily on taxonomy and ecology, and was the director of the laboratory from 1974–1977. The mosquito genus Galindomyia, the Galindoi Subgroup of Culex, and the species Aedes galindoi Schick and Culex galindoi Komp and Rozeboom were named for him.

1990 P. MATTINGLY

As one colleague wrote, “Mattingly was an original, and it’s a duller world now that they don’t come like him anymore.” A glimpse of Mattingly’s personality can be had by reading his third paper on mosquito eggs. After a diagram depicting his concept of the evolution of anopheline eggs, Mattingly included an additional figure with a more familiar tree diagram. He captioned that illustration, “For those who prefer arboriculture” (Mattingly 1969). Peter Frederick Mattingly (1914–1993) was a British scientist who started his career by studying amphibians. During the Second World War, he was a malaria control officer in the British Army in Africa. He taught medical entomology to British Army officers and was known even among more senior-ranked personnel as a demanding teacher. He visited more than 40 countries during his lifetime. Peter was the “Keeper” (curator) of Culicidae at the British Museum (Natural History) later in life. He revised the genus Tripteroides (Mattingly 1981) and wrote a series of important papers on the morphology of mosquito eggs. He was responsible for updating the first volume of Mosquitoes of the Ethiopian region and served on the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Panel on Parasitic Diseases. Peter is also remembered for his work on the Culex pipiens complex (especially for his very strong opinions on the nomenclature of that group of species) and his prescient insights into the distribution, importance, and nomenclature of Aedes aegypti (L.) (Mattingly 1957, 1958). The species Aedes mattinglyi Hamon and Rickenbach, Culex mattinglyi Knight, Eretmopodites mattinglyi Hamon and van Someren, Heizmannia mattinglyi Thurman, Mimomyia mattinglyi Grjebine, Uranotaenia mattinglyi Qutubuddin, and Wyeomyia mattinglyi Lane are named for him, as is the subgenus Mattinglyia of Heizmannia. Another species, Aedes mattinglyorum Huang, is named for Peter and his wife.

1991 P. J. [SIC] DURET

José Pedro Duret (1913–2007) was an Argentine entomologist and medical doctor who served in the Argentine Army and was a consultant to the Pan American Health Organization. He described 53 mosquito species and had assembled the most comprehensive collection of Argentine mosquitoes ever known, as well as incorporating numerous specimens from neighboring countries. Later in life, he worked at the Carlos G. Malbrán Institute in Buenos Aires. Besides mosquitoes, he was also a taxonomic authority on fungus gnats (Mycetophilidae), and he published on Ceratopogonidae, Phlebotominae, and Tabanidae. While a student, he received the Roberto Wernicke Award from the University of Buenos Aires for excellence in doctoral work. The species Culex dureti Casal and García is named for him.

1992 B. A. HARRISON

Bruce Arthur Harrison (1937–2018) was a medical entomologist and taxonomist who spent most of his career in the US Army. In addition to his military career, Harrison also worked as a civilian entomologist for the Army, National Academy of Sciences, and North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. He studied in detail the Anopheles fauna of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Additional taxonomic studies were conducted on the genera Aedeomyia, Ficalbia, Mimomyia, Hodgesia, Coquillettidia, Mansonia, and Uranotaenia. He also worked on vectors of the causal agents of dengue, lymphatic filariasis, scrub typhus, plague, yellow fever, Chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis, and fly-borne diarrheal diseases; his work took him to 16 countries. After retirement, he remained a consultant to universities, research institutes, governments, and nongovernmental agencies around the world. During his lifetime, Bruce received numerous letters of commendation and awards. He was awarded the Legion of Merit, Humanitarian Service Medal, Army Superior Unit Award, and Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters while in the Army. His civilian awards include the Hamilton W. Stevens Award from the North Carolina Mosquito and Vector Control Association, Award of Excellence from the Entomological Society of North Carolina, Outstanding Service Award and R. E. Dorer Award from the Virginia Mosquito Control Association, Roland E. Dorer Award from the Mid-Atlantic Mosquito Control Association, and Medal of Honor from the American Mosquito Control Association. The Virginia Mosquito Control Association made him an honorary member and established the Dr. Bruce Harrison Research Award to recognize peer-reviewed research conducted on Virginia mosquitoes. The species Anopheles harrisoni Harbach and Manguin, Culex harrisoni Sirivanakarn, and Uranotaenia harrisoni Peyton are named for him, as are the species Verrallina harrisonica (Reinert) and the subgenus Bruceharrisonius of Aedes.

1993 E. L. PEYTON [SIC]

E L Peyton (no periods, ever; 1929–1999) was introduced to mosquito taxonomy by Stanley Carpenter and Frank Blanton while in Army service (E L had only a high school diploma). He served in Panama, Germany, and Thailand and spent the rest of his career at the Smithsonian Institution and the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. E L had an encyclopedic knowledge of mosquito taxonomy and a comprehensive understanding of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. He made many collections throughout the Americas and elsewhere and was proficient in the taxonomy of a number of mosquito genera. He fought a lifelong battle with editors, bureaucrats, and others who insisted on putting periods after his initials “E L”—evidently people could not grasp the fact that he used no periods. At the end, however, he prevailed. His gravestone in Arlington National Cemetery is inscribed, “E L PEYTON/MSG/US ARMY/KOREA/VIETNAM/MAY 1, 1929/APR 26, 1999.” I have not been able to establish exactly what E L stood for, if anything. His father was named Edgar Lee, and I once saw E L listed with the first name Edward. One of E L’s former colleagues informed me that “E L” might be on his birth certificate; according to E L, his parents were undecided about what to name him and they just used his father’s initials. The species Aedes peytoni Reinert, Anopheles peytoni Kulasekera, Harrison, and Amerasinghe, Culex peytoni Bram and Rattanarithikul, and Orthopodomyia peytoni Leguizamón and Carpintero and the subgenus Peytonulus of Sabethes are named for him.

1994 T. H. G. AITKEN

Thomas Henry Gardiner Aitken (1913–2007), Tommy to his friends, served in the US Army in World War II as an entomologist and malariologist. He served in Puerto Rico, Algeria, Egypt, Italy, and France (Corsica) working to control malaria and typhus. He received the Bronze Star for his work in Corsica. After the war, he joined the Rockefeller Foundation and worked in Italy (Sardinia), Trinidad, New York City, and Brazil. He later joined the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit in New Haven, CT. He made significant discoveries while studying the transmission of viruses by arthropod vectors, including geographic variation of vectorial capacity of Aedes (Stegomyia) mosquitoes and transovarial transmission of viruses. The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene presented him with the Richard M. Taylor Award for outstanding contributions to arbovirology and the Harry Hoogstraal Medal for outstanding achievement in medical entomology. The government of Sardinia presented him with a gold medal in recognition of his malaria control efforts, and the Università degli Studi di Cagliari conferred an honorary doctoral degree. While in Trinidad, Aitken assembled a synoptic collection of arthropods of medical importance for the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory (now the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre) that remains one of the finest collections in the Caribbean area; the center named its laboratory for Aitken. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Medical Entomology, the Annals of Medical Entomology, and Living World, Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club. Further, the Horticultural Society in Trinidad presented him with the Gilt Medal. The Aitkenii Group of Anopheles, the mosquito Aedes aitkeni Schick, and the acarine genus Aitkenius are named for him, as are the stilt-legged fly Metopochetus aitkeni McAlpine and the fungus gnat Cluzobra aitkeni Lane.

1995 O. P. FORATTINI

Oswaldo Paulo Forattini (1924–2007) was a Brazilian medical doctor, medical entomologist, and parasitologist. In addition to mosquitoes, he also published on Ceratopogonidae, Triatominae, Phlebotominae, and Cimicidae. Oswaldo Forattini was a polygot who spoke English, French, Italian, and Spanish in addition to Portuguese. Forattini made significant contributions to the development of medical entomology and tropical medicine in Brazil. He served as the editor of Revista de Saúde Pública for 40 years. He published more than 200 scientific papers, 27 editorials, 13 books, and two book chapters. His four-volume series on medical entomology and two-volume treatise on epidemiology are considered classics in their respective fields. He prepared all of the illustrations for his medical entomology books. Among his many awards were the Emílio Ribas Award (Infectious Diseases Society of Brazil), José Pinto Alves Award (São Paulo Medical Association), Relevant Contribution for Research Award (Universidade de São Paulo), Jabuti Award, and Câmara Brasileira do Livro Award; the last two recognize significant books published in Portuguese. The species Anopheles forattinii Wilkerson and Sallum, Sabethes forattinii Cerquiera, and Wyeomyia forattinii Clastrier are named for him, as was the now-synonymized Culex forattinii Corréa and Ramalho (=Culex declarator Dyar and Knab).

1996 A. R. BARR

A. Ralph (Allen Ralph) Barr (1926–1995) was a medical entomologist who discovered that cytoplasmic incompatibility in Culex mosquitoes was caused by infection with Wolbachia microorganisms. Barr joined the Navy as a young man and passed the time aboard ship by reading philosophy, something that influenced his thinking for the rest of his life. Ralph started his entomology career at the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a monograph on the mosquitoes of Minnesota, which many biologists believe to be one of the finest regional faunal treatments produced in the twentieth century. He then moved to the University of Kansas and there he wrote another classic work on the distribution of mosquitoes of the Culex pipiens complex. After his time in Kansas, he became the Supervisor of Vector Research in the Bureau of Vector Control of the California Department of Public Health. When the Bureau of Vector Control was transferred to the University of California, Ralph joined the faculty there. His last career move was to the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ralph also was a visiting professor at the University of Singapore and the National Yang Ming Medical College in Taiwan. He was a recipient of the Memorial Lecture Award and the Meritorious Service Award from the American Mosquito Control Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Mosquito and Vector Control Association. The now-synonymized Aedes barri Rueger (=Aedes euedes Howard, Dyar, and Knab) and the microsporidian Intrapredatorus barri Chen, Kuo, and Wu are named for him.

1996 M. W. SERVICE

Michael William Service (1933–2017) worked in the Malaria Service at the Ministry of Health in Lagos, Nigeria. He then relocated to Kaduna to work for the West African Institute of Trypanosomiasis Research. He returned to the United Kingdom after completing his Ph.D. with the University of London remotely in Nigeria. He worked for Dorset Naturalist’s Trust at Brownsea Island, a National Trust property, studying biting insects, mainly mosquitoes. After that, he went to the Natural Environment Research Council’s research station, Monks Wood Experimental Station, where he was funded by the World Health Organization to study the malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae. Professor Service joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1973. He lectured on all aspects of medical entomology, leading him to write his first textbook for students on medical entomology (Service 1996). Later he wrote Mosquito ecology: field sampling methods, the first edition published in 1976 and a second edition in 1993 (Service 1993). He received the Sir Rickard Christophers Medal from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the Memorial Lecture Award from the American Mosquito Control Association.

1997 C. DAHL

Christine Ida Blank Dahl is a retired biologist who worked at Uppsala University in Sweden. She also worked at the Swedish Research Council for Natural Sciences and at Lund University. Christine Dahl studied the mosquito fauna of Fennoscandia and also published on winter crane flies (Trichoceridae). She was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London and a member of the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund and coauthored chapters in the important book Mosquitoes and their control (Becker et al. 2003). The mosquito Aedes dahlae (Nielsen) and the subgenus Dahliana of Aedes are named for her.

1998 R. E. HARBACH

Ralph Edward Harbach had a 13-year Army career and finished as Manager of the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit, Smithsonian Institution. He worked on many mosquito groups, and along with Kenneth Knight he produced the classic volume Taxonomists’ glossary of mosquito anatomy (Harbach and Knight 1980). Ralph also wrote the books Culicipedia (Harbach 1990), wherein are compiled scientific names of Culicidae at all classification levels, and Composition and nature of the Culicidae (mosquitoes), a compendium of all biosystematics information on the Culicidae (Harbach 2024). He also served as the editor of the journals Mosquito Systematics and Systematic Entomology and is currently an editor for the journal Zootaxa. He worked as a merit researcher at the Natural History Museum, London, formerly the British Natural (History Museum), until his retirement in 2018, and has continued to work there as a Scientific Associate. He is a recipient of the Memorial Lecture Award from the American Mosquito Control Association. The species Aedes harbachi Reinert and Sabethes harbachi Nascimento-Pereira, Guimãres, Lourenço-de-Olivera, and Matta and the subgenus Harbachius of Verrallina are named for him, as is the fossil species Burmaculex harbachi Szadziewski, Zhang, Bojarski, Ševčik, Krzemińska, and Krzemiński.

1999 Y.-M. HUANG

Yiau-Min Huang (1938–2023) joined the Smithsonian Institution as one of the original staff members of the Southeast Asian Mosquito Project. She stayed at the Smithsonian as a Research Associate for the National Museum of Natural History and the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. She published more than 50 scientific publications from 1968 to 2018. Even after Yiau-Min formally retired, she continued to conduct research and publish papers for the Smithsonian as well as tutor students and emerging researchers around the world. The species Aedes huangae Reinert is named for her, as is the now-synonymized subgenus Huangmyia (=Stegomyia).

2000 L. T. NIELSEN

Lewis Thomas Nielsen (1920–2014) was a professor of biology in the University of Utah. He got his start in the Zoology Department of the University of Utah, pinning mosquitoes for one of the professors. He also held a summer position with the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District. Like many men his age, his career in entomology started in the military during World War II, when he served in the US Army Medical Service Corps. During his lifetime, Nielsen became the acknowledged expert on western snowmelt mosquitoes. He published more than 90 scientific papers and wrote books on the mosquito fauna of New Mexico and Utah (Nielsen and Rees 1961, Wolff and Nielsen 2007). He was a former editor of the journal Mosquito Systematics. Lewis Nielsen was a past president and an honorary member of both the Utah Mosquito Abatement Association and the American Mosquito Control Association. He received the Don Rees Award and the Meritorious Service Award from the Utah Mosquito Abatement Association and the Medal of Honor and the Memorial Lecture Award from the American Mosquito Control Association. The mermithid worm Romanomermis nielseni (Tsai and Grundmann) may be named for him; the describers did not provide an etymology, but the worms were taken from mosquitoes collected in Wyoming, and Nielsen worked in the western United States. Aedes atropalpus nielseni O’Meara and Craig was named for him but is currently synonymized with Aedes epactius Dyar and Knab, and the genus-group name Lewnielsenius is now recognized as a subgenus of Aedes.

2001 J. F. REINERT

John Francis Reinert is a retired entomologist who served in the US Army Medical Service Corps and in his early retirement worked at the United States Department of Agriculture Medical and Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory in Gainesville, FL. He produced many revisionary studies within the genus Aedes (e.g., Reinert 1970, 1973) and later in life made detailed morphological studies of the female genitalia of mosquitoes. He and his coauthors unraveled the species within the Anopheles quadrimaculatus complex (Reinert et al. 1997). The subgenus Reinertia of Aedes is named for him, as are the species Aedes reinerti Rattanarithikul and Harrison and Uranotaenia reinerti Peyton.

2002 R. F. DARSIE

Richard (Dick) Floyd Darsie, Jr. (1915–2014) was an entomologist who worked with the Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He collected mosquitoes throughout the Americas and in the Philippines and Nepal. In his later years, he studied mosquitoes while in residence at the University of South Carolina’s International Center for Public Health and the University of Florida’s Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory. He is probably best known for his book Identification and geographical distribution of the mosquitoes of North America north of Mexico, coauthored with Ronald A. Ward (2005). Dick Darsie also described the pupae of many mosquito species.

2003 R. C. WILKERSON

Richard (Rick) Charles Wilkerson is a retired civilian entomologist who worked in the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit and was manager there for 10 years. During the Vietnam War period, he taught medical entomology at the Medical Field Service School at Ft. Sam Houston. He has produced taxonomic and systematic works on many mosquito groups, mostly Neotropical Anopheles species complexes, and produced the first modern treatment of the horse fly fauna of Colombia, describing more than 50 new species. He is the senior author for the two-volume Mosquitoes of the world, wherein every species of mosquito described worldwide is examined and analyzed. Based on the comprehensive taxonomic study completed by Rick and Ralph Harbach in 2023, all subspecies were eliminated from the classification of the Culicidae (Harbach and Wilkerson 2023). The species Aedes wilkersoni Reinert and the phlebotomine Lutzomyia wilkersoni Young and Rogers are named for him.

2004 KAZULO [SIC] TANAKA

This name is misspelled on the AMCA website; his first name was Kazuo. Kazuo Tanaka (1928–2024) worked with the US Army Medical Entomology Laboratory, Pacific in Japan, and he conducted extensive studies on the pupal taxonomy of Japanese mosquitoes. Tanaka also conducted surveys of the Ryukyu Islands, correcting a number of erroneous distribution records, and he described a number of new mosquito species. He left the Army laboratory in 1978. He spent several years in Indonesia and Thailand working with the Japan International Cooperation Agency. He also worked for a pest control company for about 16 years. For many years, Tanaka collected carabid beetles from a variety of habitats in Japan. His collection of 16,379 specimens is housed in the Insect Museum of the Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, NARO (National Agriculture and Food Research Organization; Yoshimatsu et al. 2018). His work on carabid beetles was the basis of his Doctor of Agriculture dissertation submitted to the Tokyo University of Agriculture. He received an award for his taxonomic work on mosquitoes from the Japanese Society for Medical Entomology and Zoology. The species Uranotaenia tanakai Miyagi and Toma and the subgenus Tanakaius of Aedes are named for him.

2005 RONALD A. WARD

Ronald Anthony Ward (1929–2017) was formerly head of the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit of the Smithsonian Institution. He got his start in professional entomology as an instructor of biology in Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He then moved to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, studying malaria, trypanosomiasis, and mosquito taxonomy in Afghanistan, Tanzania, Thailand, and Zaire. Along with Richard Darsie, he wrote the book Identification and geographical distribution of the mosquitoes of North America north of Mexico. He received the Medal of Honor, Meritorious Service Award, and Memorial Lecture Award from the American Mosquito Control Association. He was editor of the journal Mosquito News and the replacement Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association from 1981 to 1996. He was a coauthor on the updated version of AMCA Bulletin No. 5, Manual for mosquito rearing and experimental techniques. He also published a series of corrections, supplements, and updates to the world catalog of mosquitoes. The species Aedes wardi Reinert and Culex wardi Sirivanakarn are named for him.

2006 BILL REISEN

William Kenneth Reisen is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. Bill Reisen served as a captain in the US Air Force from 1969 to 1971, assigned to the 5th Epidemiological Flight and 1st Medical Service Wing in the Republic of the Philippines. He conducted vector-borne disease surveillance and control support on US Air Force bases in the Pacific Air Command, including Guam, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Thailand. After completing his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, he started his academic career at the University of Maryland’s Pakistan Medical Research Center in Lahore. He then joined the University of California, first at Berkeley where he was Director of the School of Public Health’s Arbovirus Field Station in Bakersfield and later at Davis where he was Director of the Center for Vector-Borne Diseases. During much of his career hs studied the biology, ecology, and population dynamics of mosquito vectors and epidemiology of arboviruses. His many awards include the Sigma Xi Student Research Award, Arthur T. Bragg Award for outstanding research in natural history (University of Oklahoma), Lifetime Award for Achievement in Medical Entomology (Society for Vector Ecology), Academic Federation Award for Excellence in Research (University of California), Fellow of the ESA, Distinguished Service Award (Society for Vector Ecology), Meritorious Service Award (AMCA), and Harry Hoogstraal Medal (American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, American Committee of Medical Entomology). Reisen has served on the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s American Committee on Medical Entomology, the California Mosquito and Vector Control Association’s Disease Control Subcommittee, and the California Department of Health Service’s Vector Control Advisory Committee. He is a past president of the Society for Vector Ecology and a past chairman of Section D (Medical Entomology) of the ESA. In 1992, he was the leader of the People-to-People delegation of vector ecologists to the People’s Republic of China. He is a past editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Entomology and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Science and Climatic Change and Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. He is the author of 340 scientific publications. The species Tripteroides reiseni Basio and Basio is named for him.

2007 NO AWARD

2008 MARIA ANICE MUREB SALLUM

Anice Sallum is a Brazilian researcher in the Universidade de São Paulo. She has conducted extensive studies on the ecology and systematics of the mosquitoes of South America. Most of her work has been on malaria vectors, but she has published on several other mosquito genera, including Mansonia and Culex, especially the difficult subgenus Melanoconion. She is the first author on a series of four papers that provide identification keys to the Anopheles mosquitoes of South America (Sallum et al. 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d). The species Aedes sallumae González and Reyes and the subgenus Sallumia of Aedes are named for her.

2009 NO AWARD

2010 DANIEL STRICKMAN

Daniel Allen Strickman (1953–2020) had a varied career. He started in the Peace Corps as a professor at the National University of Asunción, Paraguay. Afterwards he served as an entomologist in both the US Air Force and the US Army, working in Thailand, Honduras, Korea, the Middle East, and the USA. Although Dan Strickman is best known for his work on mosquitoes, he also worked on tabanids, chiggers, and rodents. One of his more interesting papers is a study of the biology of a spider preying on dengue vectors (Strickman et al. 1997). After his military career, Dan worked for the Santa Clara County (California) Vector Control program, the US Department of Agriculture, and the Gates Foundation. In retirement, Dan volunteered at the Burke Museum of Natural History at the University of Washington. Dan published 115 scientific papers, 16 book chapters, and four books. Among those books is the two-volume set Mosquitoes of the world, coauthored with Richard Wilkerson and Yvonne Linton. He was elected a Fellow of the ESA and received the Dow AgroSciences Integrated Pest Management Team Award, a Bronze Medal from the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the GreenGov Award from the Office of the President. Dan was awarded a number of medals while in service; the highest were the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star. The Society for Vector Ecology presents the Dan Strickman Memorial Award for the best student presentation at their annual meeting.

2011 RAMPA RATTANARITHIKUL, PH.D.

Rampa Rattanarithikul is retired from the US Army Medical Component, Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangkok, Thailand. She worked on the taxonomy and systematics of a number of mosquito genera in Southeast Asia, including Anopheles, Aedeomyia, Ficalbia, Mimomyia, Hodgesia, Coquillettidia, Mansonia, and Uranotaenia. She is the senior author of a six-part guide to the mosquitoes of Thailand. The species Anopheles rampae Harbach and Somboon and Uranotaenia rampae Peyton and Klein and the subgenus Rampamyia of Aedes are named for her.

2012 MAUREEN COETZEE

Maureen Coetzee is a South African entomologist who works at the Wits Research Institute for Malaria, University of the Witwatersrand, Braamofontein, Johannesburg. Her work is primarily on the biology, systematics, and control of African malaria vectors. She has also studied the relationship between vector status and resistance to insecticides for Anopheles mosquitoes. She and M. T. Gillies updated the publication Anophelinae of the Subsaharan Region (Gillies and Coetzee 1987). She is the recipient of the Kwame Nkrumah Science Award, awarded by the African Union to recognize outstanding scientists in Africa. The subgenus Coetzeemyia of Aedes and the bacterial genus Coetzeea were named for her.

2013 JOHN F. ANDERSON

John Frederick Anderson is an entomologist in the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and is a Clinical Professor of Epidemiology in Yale University’s School of Public Health, both in New Haven, CT. He works on the ecology of ticks and mosquitoes and the isolation and characterization of the microbial pathogens carried by those arthropods. He has made significant contributions to the study of behavior of disease vectors, especially but not limited to vectors of West Nile virus.

2014 GRAHAM WHITE

Graham Bruce White worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was Keeper (curator) of the Culicidae at the British Museum (Natural History) and a consultant for ICI in the United Kingdom. In the USA, he was the Technical Consultant for the Deployed Warfighter Protection Research Program based at the Mosquito and Fly Research Unit, Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Gainesville, FL. He studied taxonomy of Culex species, chemosterilization of mosquitoes, insect repellents, and taxonomy of the Anopheles gambiae and maculipennis complexes. Graham White was one of the original editors of the journal Medical and Veterinary Entomology. He received the Memorial Lecture Award from the American Mosquito Control Association.

2015 ELENA B. VINOGRADOVA

Elena Borissovna Vinogradova (1933–2021) was an entomologist working in the Laboratory of Experimental Biology and Biocontrol Theory in the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Much of her work was done on the Culex pipiens complex in Russia (e.g., Vinogradova and Shaikevich 2007, Vinogradova et al. 2013). She wrote two monographs on the species complex (Vinogradova 1997, 2000) and two books on diapause of flies (Vinogradova 1969, 1991) and also conducted work on Calliphoridae, including yet another book (Vinogradova 1984).

2016 NO AWARD

2017 DR. GEORGE F. O’MEARA

George Francis O’Meara is a retired professor of entomology in the University of Florida and past president of the Florida Mosquito Control Association. He has done a lifetime’s work on Aedes aegypti and has also published on other mosquito species. Much of his work concerns invasive species, mosquitoes inhabiting sewage treatment plants, and basic physiology and ecology. George has studied genetics, behavior, geographic distribution, vector competence, comparative morphology, population ecology, community ecology, biogeography, taxonomy, reproductive biology, and phenology of mosquitoes. He is the only person to be a recipient of both the Maurice Provost Award and the Joseph Y. Porter Award from the Florida Mosquito Control Association.

2018 LEON PHILIP LOUNIBOS

Leon Philip Lounibos is a retired professor of entomology in the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory of the University of Florida. He previously worked at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya. He has conducted research on tree-hole mosquitoes, container mosquitoes, and Anopheles malaria vectors in South America. His work has mainly been focused on the ecology of mosquitoes and mechanisms of success for invasive mosquito species. His work on the ecology of mosquitoes included editing the proceedings of a major workshop that advanced this field (Lounibos et al. 1985). Some of the diverse systems and mosquito species that were subjects of his research are summarized in a semibiographical sketch from a workshop held in honor his retirement (Juliano et al. 2019). The Afrotropical mosquito Anopheles lounibosi Gillies and Coetzee is named for him.

2019 NORBERT BECKER

Norbert Becker is a German biologist working with many mosquito control programs in Europe. He was the inventor of the technique to use ice pellets to deliver Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis de Barjac to larval habitats. He is a professor at the University of Heidelberg and has been active and held offices in the German Mosquito Control Association, European Mosquito Control Association, and World Mosquito Control Association. Among his honors are the National Medal of the Slovenian Republic, Distinguished Service Award of the Society for Vector Ecology, Escherich-Preis of the German Society of Entomology, Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Meritorious Service Award of the AMCA, and Distinguished Life Time Service Award of the Society for Vector Ecology. His publications have considered climate change effects (e.g., Becker 2008) and invasive species (Becker et al. 2011, 2012) on mosquito control in northern Europe.

2020 JAN CONN

Jan Evelyn Conn is a vector geneticist working at the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center. She is also a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the School of Public Health, State University of New York–Albany. Jan Conn studies the population genetics of malaria vectors in the tropics and has previously studied black flies. She has produced a phytogeography of the major vector Anopheles darlingi Root (Conn 1998, Emerson et al. 2015) and identified a new vector of human malaria in Brazil, promoted by migration and land use changes (Conn et al. 2002). She has published ten books of poetry, most recently Peony vertigo (Brick Books 2023), and her paintings can be viewed at https://laurenclarkfineart.com/collections/jan-conn. The species Anopheles janconnae Wilkerson and Sallum is named for her.

2021 KEN LINTHICUM

Kenneth James Linthicum has spent most of his career in government service, either with the US Army or with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). After his Ph.D. at UCLA mentored by John Belkin (Linthicum 1988), he became an instructor of biology at California State University, Los Angeles. His Army career has been varied and challenging, with duty in Kenya and Thailand. His diverse research accomplishments include identification of reservoirs of Rift Valley Fever virus in infrequently flooded dambos in Kenya (Linthicum 1984) and the first use of satellite imagery to detect such mosquito-borne disease reservoirs (Linthicum et al. 1987). After his Army service and prior to his work at the USDA, Linthicum was the Supervising Public Health Biologist for the Southern Region, Vector-Borne Disease Section, California Department of Health Services. He is a past president of the AMCA and a past editor of the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association. He has received numerous military awards, including one from the Royal Thai Army. Among his many civilian awards is the John I. Davidson Award for Practical Papers by the American Society for Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing. He is a recipient of the AMCA’s Memorial Lecture Award and Meritorious Service Award. Ken has also been a member of the American Committee on Medical Entomology, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

2022 DR. CHET MOORE

Chester Gunn Moore is a retired entomologist who worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Ft. Collins, CO, and San Juan, Puerto Rico; the University of Puerto Rico; the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research; and Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. His work has concentrated on mosquito vectors of arboviruses. Chet Moore was the lead author on a CDC document presenting guidelines for arbovirus surveillance programs (Moore et al. 1993) and is perhaps best known for tracking the spread of the invasive Asian tiger mosquito in the USA (Moore et al. 1990, 1999). He is a past president of the AMCA and the Society for Vector Ecology. Among his numerous awards are the American Mosquito Control Association’s Medal of Honor and the Meritorious Service Award, the Society for Vector Ecology’s Distinguished Achievement Award, Distinguished Service Award, and Presidential Order Award, the West Central Mosquito and Vector Control Association’s Service Award, a Service Recognition Plaque from the Puerto Rico Department of Health, and a Secretary’ s Award for Distinguished Service from the US Department of Health and Human Services. The US Public Health Service recognized him with three Group Awards, two Special Recognitions Awards, and a Superior Performance Award.

2023 JOHN EDMAN AND BRUCE ELDRIDGE

John David Edman worked at the State of Florida’s Entomological Research Center in Vero Beach (currently the University of Florida’s Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory), the University of Massachusetts, and the University of California, Davis. John Edman is known for his groundbreaking research on the defensive behavior of vertebrate hosts in response to attack by mosquitoes and on blood-feeding behavior of mosquitoes, and for demonstrating a shift in feeding patterns by some Culex species from avian hosts to mammals, including humans, which explained patterns of seasonal transmission of St. Louis encephalitis virus in Florida. Edman has received many honors, among them the L. O. Howard Award and the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Eastern Branch of the ESA. He is a Fellow of both the ESA and the Royal Entomological Society. He is a recipient of the AMCA’s Medal of Honor and Memorial Lecture Award. John received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Vector Ecology and the Harry Hoogstraal Medal from the American Committee on Medical Entomology of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is a past president of the American Mosquito Control Association. He was secretary, vice chair, and chair of Section D (Medical & Veterinary Entomology) of the ESA. He also served as president of the Society for Vector Ecology.

2024 WILLIAM BRADSHAW AND CHRISTINA HOLZAPFEL

This husband-and-wife team retired from the University of Oregon. They spent more than 50 years researching fundamental biological and ecological concepts, primarily using the pitcher plant mosquito, Wyeomyia smithii (Coquillett) as a model organism. They demonstrated how Wy. smithii evolved from south to north in its dormancy strategies in North America, used phytogeographic methods to show how this species radiated from Appalachia to its current distribution in the USA and Canada, and showed how small suites of genes controlled the evolutionary transition of this species to obligate autogeny from blood feeding ancestors. During sabbaticals in the 1980s and 90s, Bradshaw and Holzapfel conducted community ecological research on tree hole mosquitoes in the southeastern USA and Europe. They have also published on other mosquito species, fish, and plants. Both Bradshaw and Holzapfel are Guggenheim Fellows and Fullbright Fellows.

2025 FRANCIS SCHAFFNER

Francis Schaffner is a medical and veterinary entomologist who has investigated mosquitoes, biting midges, sand flies, and other biting flies. He has also studied ectoparasites of rodents and vectors of eyeworms. Initially, he was involved with mosquito control and mosquito taxonomy in France, beginning in Alsace and then on the Mediterranean coast. From 2007 to 2013, he worked at the Institute of Parasitology, University of Zurich, Switzerland, where he developed research and surveillance programs for insect vectors. He remains an associate researcher at that institution. He also was employed by Avia-GIS, a Belgian company developing digital tools for vector surveillance. Since 2016, Schaffner has been an independent consultant (Francis Schaffner Consultancy, Riehen, Switzerland), interacting with international bodies (European Centre for Disease Control, European Food Safety Authority, World Health Organization) and national authorities to develop networking, performing needs assessments, and designing risk management plans for vector-borne diseases. He has more than 33 years of experience in Europe and in EU Overseas Countries and Territories, the Middle East, and North Africa carrying out surveillance, control, taxonomy, and ecology of insect vectors and transmission of human and animal vector-borne disease pathogens. Francis Schaffner is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the European Mosquito Control Association. He is a recipient of the Society for Vector Ecology’s Distinguished Achievement Award. The Société entomologique de France awarded him the Prix Passet, “awarded to work most useful to general entomology” (translated from the French) and in particular work that deals with insect larvae. He also received the Prix de thèse de la Société Française de Parasitologie, an award that recognizes significant achievement during doctoral studies.