Alois M. Huger

Alois M. Huger (23 June 1928 – 19 September 2023) was a German entomologist and a pioneer in insect pathology as well as in the use of insect pathogens for the biological control of pest insects. He worked mainly on the diagnosis of insect diseases in Darmstadt, Germany. Among others, he discovered a virus disease of the coconut palm rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros) in Malaysia from a previously unknown group of viruses which provided long-term control of this pest when introduced into islands invaded by the beetle.

Biography Alois Huger was born on 23 June 1928 in Pittersberg, near Amberg in Bavaria, Germany. He studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) in Munich. One of his professors was Karl von Frisch, Nobel laureate who discovered how bees communicate among each other. His PhD thesis on the symbionts of stored product pests was supervised by Anton Koch.

In 1957, after completing his studies he joined the Institut für biologische Schädlingsbekämpfung, Biologische Bundesanstalt für Land- und Forstwirtschaft (Institute for Biological Pest Control, Federal Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry) in Darmstadt, where he worked for his entire professional career.

His research focused mainly on insect diseases and he became an expert on a wide range of microorganisms causing such diseases, including microsporidia, bacteria, viruses and fungi. He was a founding member of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology and soon became well known in this field. His laboratory was specialized on identifying insect diseases and he was asked to diagnose disease outbreaks in insect cultures of research institutes and commercial companies. His work led to the discovery of various new disease agents, several of them of scientific and practical significance.