James Halliday McDunnough

James Halliday McDunnough (10 May 1877 – 23 February 1962) was a Canadian linguist, musician, and entomologist best known for his work with North American Lepidoptera, but who also made important contributions about North American Ephemeroptera.

Early life McDunnough travelled with his mother and aunt to Berlin to be trained as a classical musician, studying under the great violinist Joseph Joachim. After a season as a violinist in a symphony orchestra in Glasgow, Scotland (presumably what is now the Royal Scottish National Orchestra), he taught English to a Russian family and then decided to change careers. In 1904 he went back to study in Berlin, receiving his doctorate in zoology in 1909.

Returning to North America, he worked briefly at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and married Margaret Bertels, from Berlin. He soon learned of an important opportunity: a wealthy surgeon in Decatur, Illinois named William Barnes needed an entomologist to serve as curator and researcher for his private collection of North American Lepidoptera - probably the best in existence at the time.

From 1910 to 1919 McDunnough produced, with Barnes credited as co-author, an impressive volume of research on the taxonomy of North American Lepidoptera, including the first four volumes of the privately published Contributions to the Natural History of the Lepidoptera of North America, the 1917 Check list of the Lepidoptera of Boreal America, Illustrations of the North American Species of the Genus Catocala, and numerous journal articles, 67 papers in all. He also published nine articles solely under his own name during this period. His last paper was published in the year of his death, 1962, at the age of 84.