William Moore, an American entomologist, qualified as Bachelor of Arts (BA) and was recruited by the Department of Agriculture of the Transvaal Colony just before the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. He was attached to the Potchefstroom Agricultural School and Experimental Farm (the school was established in 1909) as a lecturer in entomology and proved to be hard working and talented. In 1910 he presented some frogs and fish from Potchefstroom to the Albany Museum. The next year he delivered two talks on insect pests before the Transvaal Biological Society. During 1912 and 1913 he contributed seven articles on insect pests to the Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa. And in 1912 he completed a book on South African insect pests (and other external pests) of man and domesticated animals: A handbook of ready reference (Johannesburg, 1912, 139 pp).

After a few years Moore returned to the United States, where he continued his research on insect pests and insecticides. He was employed in the Division of Economic Zoology of the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station of the US Department of Agriculture and in the Entomology Department of the University of Minnesota. While there he published, among others, a paper on "How gases enter insects" (Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 1916) and papers on the toxicity of various benzene derivatives to insects (1917), the physical properties governing the efficacy of contact insecticides (with S.A. Graham, 1918) and non-arsenical stomach poison insecticides (1924), all in the department's Journal of Agricultural Research. In 1920 he was awarded the degree Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) by Cornell University. His thesis was titled Spreading and adherence of arsenical sprays. In the late nineteen-thirties he worked in the Stanford laboratories of the American Cyanamid Company.

List of sources:

Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa, 1912-1913, Vol. 3-6, articles by W. Moore.

Albany Museum. Annual Report for 1910, 1911, 1912 and 1913.

Google scholar. http://scholar.google.co.za Publications by W. Moore.

Lounsbury, C.P. The pioneer period of economic entomology in South Africa. Journal of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa, 1940, Vol. 3, pp. 9-29.

National Union Catalogue, pre-1956 imprints. London: Mansell, 1968-1980.

South African bibliography to the year 1925. London: Mansell, 1979.

The Transvaal Biological Society. South African Journal of Natural History, 1918, Vol. 1(1), pp. 24-32.

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2020-04-23 17:30:14