Biographical Memoirs Volume 86 (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Howard E. Evans
Howard E. Evans
Pages 118-135
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From page 119... ...
He was also, in his spare time, a talented writer of popular books and articles on natural history and conservation. Howard Evans's love of nature began on the Evans family farm near East Hartford, Connecticut, a 60-acre tobacco farm that was purchased, with the help of financing from his maternal grandfather, Howard Ensign, when his parents were married.
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From page 120... ...
But his rural background was a lasting influence and inspiration. Even as an undergraduate Howard wrote, in a classroom essay on "Experiences With Insects," I think the moderr : -id tends to debunk, or at least to mirimize, the values and advartages of being courtry bred But I am sure that the appreciation of country life is merely goir g ur der a cloud, ar d will emerge again when the people once more take to the country rather than swarmirg in the cities like flies on rotten fruit Although my family moved away from the farm into the suburbs a few years ago, my absence from the cour try has ter ded to accer tuate rather thar suppress my affix ity for the thir gs of r ature My hobbies ther were r ot the at dir ary or es, such as stamp or coir collectir g, but cor sisted of recordir g the livir g thir gs I saw,
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From page 121... ...
. After writing an undergraduate thesis on insects reared from the downed trees and branches of the 1938 hurricane, he graduated magna cum laude in 1940.
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From page 122... ...
Immediately after college graduation Howard worked at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, and then went to Cornell, where he completed a master's thesis on spider wasps (Pompilidae)
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From page 123... ...
, and Tim. Mary Alice was the daughter of the Cornell entomologist Henry Dietrich, who had "warned his daughters to stay away from entomologists, who were likely to be impecunious and little appreciated by society." "Fortunately," Howard wrote, "Mary Alice failed to take his advice" (Evans, 1985, p.
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From page 124... ...
With Mary Alice as senior author, they wrote a 363-page scholarly biography of Harvard entomologist William Morton Wheeler (Evans and Evans, 1970) , a major figure of early twentieth-century science, whose story as recounted in the Evanses' biography gives a fascinating view of the issues, personages, and Old World influences that marked biology in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.
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From page 125... ...
He would always leave his desk at the museum completely clear of clutter when he went home at the end of the day. Some think that Howard's clean desk top was made possible by a set of messy drawers underneath, but I think it was the same orderly discipline that enabled him to accomplish large amounts of work and writing without pause for the 54 productive years spanning his career.
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From page 126... ...
, Darryl Gwynne, Mary Hathaway, Allan Hook, Rob Longair, Kevin O'Neill, and William Rubink. Three years after the move to Colorado, Howard was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot medal (in 1976)
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From page 127... ...
Evans was a pioneer in the use of behavioral data in systematics, and he proposed a number of important ideas that I would call "transition hypotheses" showing how complex behaviors such as nest building, social life, and specialized prey transport could have evolved from hypothesized ancestral states. Along with phylogenies and adaptive explanations in terms of natural selection, such hypotheses establishing the feasibility of particular phenotypic changes are an essential part of evolutionary explanations.
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From page 128... ...
His way of promoting those values, aside from his personal interactions with the people around him and the quality of his scientific work, was to write clean, beautiful poetic prose that was at the same time lighthearted and earnest and deep. Three things stand out among the ideals that he promoted in both his scientific publications and his books and articles written for the general public.
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From page 129... ...
. On the contrary, he recommended both my husband, William Eberhard, and me for a fellowship at a summer research station, even though we would be going there directly from a maternity clinic; and he waited with seemingly endless patience for my chapters of our book Howard always treated us with respect as a couple, reinforc
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From page 130... ...
After Howard retired from his position at Colorado State in 1986, the Evanses moved to a beautiful mountain home 35 miles from Fort Collins. At 7,800 feet it had a spectacular 50-mile view on all sides.
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From page 131... ...
. Mary Alice Evans provided a copy of the unpublished scientific autobiography of Howard Evans written in 1999, an essay of personal reminiscences written for his family in 1986, and a complete list of his publications.
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From page 132... ...
1973. Systematics and nesting behavior of Australian Benson sand wasps (Hymenoptera, Sphecidae)
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From page 133... ...
82:3566. 1957 Stud ies on the Comparative Ethology of Digger Wasps of the Genus BenIbix.
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From page 134... ...
Alternative mating strategies in the digger wasp Philanthus zebratus Cresson.
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From page 135... ...
Hook. Nesting behavior of Australian Cerceris digger wasps, with special reference to nest reutilization and nest sharing (Hymenoptera, Sphecidae)
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