Richard M. Bohart

Richard Mitchell Bohart (September 28, 1913 – February 1, 2007) was an American entomologist and professor at the University of California, Davis. From 1963 to 1967 he served as chair of the Department of Entomology for the University of California, Davis.

Bohart's contributions to the Department of Entomology led to the dedication of the on campus Bohart Museum of Entomology, named after him in 1986.

Research

Bohart's experiences in butterfly collecting transitioned to a more scientific endeavor after making an insect collection to satisfy requirements for a University of California, Berkeley field course in entomology. He found a bee (Andrena) which had a sack-like parasite protruding from its abdomen which was identified by E. C. VanDyke as a female Stylops (order Strepsiptera). It was the subject of his Ph.D. thesis in 1938.

In November 1942 Bohart was drafted into the US Army then transferred into the US Navy Medical Corps as an ensign. Here he taught malaria and mosquito control at Camp LeJeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and then at Marine base, Camp Perry in Williamsburg, Virginia. In the spring of 1944 Bohart was transferred to Washington, D.C., and assigned to Naval Medical Research Unit #2 housed at the National Academy of Sciences. Almost immediately Bohart was sent to Orlando and Tallahassee, Florida, to study mosquitoes for a month. In the fall of 1944 Bohart was assigned abroad to Guam then Okinawa for the purposes of malaria control. In the fall of 1945 Bohart remained in the navy to complete his research on mosquitoes. In the spring of 1946 Bohart was released from the navy with the rank of lieutenant commander and returned to the University of California, Los Angeles.

In 2001 Bohart married Chilean entomologist , who was a graduate student at the Bohart Museum. Elizabeth is a coleopterologist who works at the Essig Museum of Entomology (UC Berkeley).