"Entomologist" Vincent Dethier Signed Announcement Dated 1989 Todd Mueller COA

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"Entomologist" Vincent Dethier Hand Signed Announcement Dated 1989.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-4872
Vincent Gaston Dethier
(20 February 1915 – 8 September 1993) was an American
physiologist
and
entomologist
. Considered a leading expert in his field, he was a pioneer in the study of insect-plant interactions and wrote over 170 academic papers and 15 science books. From 1975 until his death, he was the Gilbert L. Woodside Professor of Zoology at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
where he was the founding director of its Neuroscience and Behavior Program and chaired the Chancellor's Commission on Civility. Dethier also wrote natural history books for non-specialists, as well as short stories, essays and children's books. Vincent Dethier was born on 20 February 1915 in
Boston, Massachusetts
, one of the four children of Jean Vincent and Marguerite (Lally) Dethier. Before her marriage, his mother, who was of Irish extraction, was a school teacher in Boston. His Belgian-born father was a graduate of the
Royal Conservatory of Liège
who emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. He was organist of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston and later became Director of Music for the
Norwood, Massachusetts
public school system and the organist and choirmaster of St. Catherine's Church in Norwood.
[2]
Vincent Dethier's uncles were noted musicians —
Edouard Dethier
was a violinist and
Gaston Dethier
was an organist and composer. Both taught at the
Juilliard School
for many years. Although Vincent Dethier was the first of his father's family to become a scientist, he retained a lifelong interest in
Baroque music
and played in a
recorder
quartet during his years at the University of Massachusetts.
In his 1989 autobiographical essay "Curiosity, Milieu and Era", Dethier attributed his interest in insects, which would become a central aspect of his research career, to a childhood encounter with a butterfly in a neighborhood park known as "the oval": I had wandered up to the oval late one hot, humid, summer day. The long, slanting rays of the sun illuminated my white shirt. Suddenly, something rocketed across the street, made a few zigzags, and landed on my shirt, just above the pocket. I stood stock-still and slowly lowered my head to see what it was. There with its wings slowly expanding clung a brown butterfly with a red band extending down each wing. This
red admiral
was the first live butterfly I had ever seen at close range, and I was fascinated.
Dethier received his undergraduate degree from
Harvard University
and went on to obtain his PhD there in 1939. His research in the 1930s was on the feeding habits of
swallowtail butterfly
caterpillars. He became the first to prove that food is selected by caterpillars not by a plant's nutritional value but by its taste and smell. His first post-doctoral position was as a biology instructor at
John Carroll University
in
Cleveland, Ohio
where he taught from 1939 to 1941. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the
Army Air Corps
, serving part of his time in Africa and Middle East. He wrote his first book,
Chemical Insect Attractants and Repellents
, in the bomb bay of a
B-25
on what he called a "liberated" Italian typewriter.
[6]
He then worked in the
Army Chemical Corps
as a research physiologist until 1946. Towards the end of his time in the Army he worked with Leigh Edward Chadwick at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland (now the
Aberdeen Proving Ground
) in a long series of experiments analyzing the effects of chemicals on the
chemosensors
of flies. After the war ended, Dethier taught briefly at
Ohio State University
before taking a teaching post at
Johns Hopkins University
where he taught from 1947 to 1958. He was a professor of zoology and psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania
from 1958 to 1967 and then went to
Princeton University
, where for the next nine years he held the Class of 1877 Chair as Professor of Biology. In 1975, he returned to his native Massachusetts for his last appointment, the Gilbert L. Woodside Professor of Zoology at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
. There he became the founding director of the Neuroscience and Behavior Program and chaired the Chancellor's Commission on Civility, publishing
A University in Search of Civility
in 1984. Vincent Dethier was an active scientist and teacher until his death at the age of 78. On 8 September 1993, he had an apparent heart attack while teaching at the University of Massachusetts. He died later that day at the
Cooley Dickinson Hospital
in
Northampton, Massachusetts
, survived by his wife Lois (Crow) Dethier and their two sons, Jehan Vincent Dethier and Paul Georges Dethier.
After his death the University of Massachusetts established the Vincent G. Dethier Award for "the faculty member who best exemplifies the ideals to which Dethier aspired."