Haliday, Alexander Henry (1807-1870)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Alexander Henry Haliday, also known as Enrico Alessandro Haliday and Alexis Heinrich Haliday (1807–1870), was an Irish entomologist. He is primarily known for his work on Hymenoptera, Diptera and Thysanoptera, but Haliday worked on all insect orders and on many aspects of entomology. Haliday was born in Holywood, County Down, Ireland. A boyhood friend of Robert Templeton, he divided his time between Ireland and Lucca, now part of Italy, where he was a co-founder with Camillo Rondani and Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti of the Italian Entomological Society. He was a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Belfast Natural History Society and a Fellow of the (now Royal) Entomological Society of London. With Hermann Loew (1807–1879), Alexander Haliday was among the greatest dipterists of the 19th century and one of the most renowned British entomologists of the day. His achievements were in four main fields: description, higher taxonomy, synonymy and biology. He erected many major taxa including the order Thysanoptera and the families Mymaridae and Ichneumonidae. Most of Haliday's correspondence with British and continental entomologists is in the library of the Royal Entomological Society, other parts are in the Hope Department Library at the University of Oxford. Haliday died in Lucca in 1870. He was our first entomologist. His ideas of classification and tabulation were so logical, his latinity so classical, and his knowledge of whatever he touched so masterly that I fear we shall be long before we look upon his like again

PUBLICATIONS

 * Haliday, A. H. 1836. Descriptions, etc. of the Hymenoptera. Pp. 316-331 in: Curtis, J., Haliday, A. H., Walker, F.  Descriptions, etc. of the insects collected by Captain P. P. King R. N., F. R. S., in the survey of the Straits of Magellan.  Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 17:315-359.

REFERENCE

 * Beirne, B.P. 1985. The Irish Naturlaist Journal (Spec. Ent. Suppl.) 1985: 9-10, portrait.