Karl-Johan Hedqvist

Karl-Johan Hedqvist (18 July 1917 – 27 December 2009) was a Swedish entomologist who focused on wasps (Hymenoptera), especially chalcid wasps and other parasitoid wasps. He described 260 species and over 70 genera of wasps.

Hedqvist was born on 18 July 1917 in Bodarna of Västerbotten County in northern Sweden. In 1939, he took his first insect-related job as a field assistant looking at forest pest insects. Retaining a focus on forest entomology, he moved to Stockholm for further studies and an assistant position at the Swedish Forest Research Institute from 1949. In this capacity, he travelled extensively around Sweden, working on pest management. At the same time he was accumulated up a large personal insect collection and started publishing widely (from 1945) on faunistics and applied entomology, on a subjects across the major insect orders Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and Hemiptera. In 1951 he married and settled in Vallentuna, north of Stockholm. He and his wife eventually had two children. In 2011 his collection of more than 50,000 Hymenoptera from around the world was purchased from his relatives by the Natural History Museum, London. At least six species of wasps have been named for Hedqvist.