Whitcomb, Willard Hall (1915 -2002)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Entomology and Nematology Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Willard H. Whitcomb, Jan. 12, 2002. An entomologist and professor, Willard Whitcomb was an exchange student at the University of Rostock in northern Germany the year after graduation, then earned his M.S. at Texas A&M in 1942 and Ph.D. from Cornell in 1947. He served in the U.S. Army for two years during World War II. For several years, he was an entomologist for the Venezuelan Ministry of Agriculture and headed the Shell Petroleum Co. research there. A professor of entomology at the Univ. of Arkansas for 10 years, he then was appointed professor of entomology and nematology at the Univ. of Florida at Gainesville, retiring in 1988. Willard Whitcomb was a consultant for the United Nations in Peru and Paraguay, did research in South America, Zaire, and Guadeloupe, and was credited with finding the first boll weevil in South America as well as discovering the homeland of the imported fire ant. He published 200 articles and bulletins and was writing a book on insect predators at the time of his death. He was fluent in German, Spanish, somewhat in French, and had studied Japanese, Parsee, Guanari, and Swahili. In 1977, the Florida Department of Agricultural Consumer Services awarded him their Plant Protection Award of Eminence. Dr. Whitcomb retired as professor emeritus at the Univ. of Florida after 40 years as a tropical entomologist and then became president of Fita Technica Floridana Inc., an international agricultural consulting firm. He belonged to a number of state and national entomological societies, the American and British Arachnological Society, AAUP, and Sigma Xi.

TAXONOMIC PUBLICATIONS

 * Whitcomb, W. H.; Denmark, H. A.; Buren, W. F.; Carroll, J. F. 1972. Habits and present distribution in Florida of the exotic ant, Pseudomyrmex mexicanus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Fla. Entomol. 55: 31-33