Sheffield Airey Neave

Sheffield Airey Neave CMG OBE (20 April 1879 – 31 December 1961) was a British naturalist and entomologist. Neave was the grandson of Sheffield Neave, a governor of the Bank of England and he was the father of Airey Neave.

Early life Born in Kensworth in Hertfordshire on 20 April 1879, he was the son of Sheffield Henry M. Neave and his wife Gertrude Charlotte Margaret (née Airey). He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Entomologist and name compilation activities Neave returned to the United Kingdom in 1913 and was appointed assistant director of the Imperial Institute of Entomology, becoming director from 1942 to 1946. He was rewarded for his contribution to entomology with an appointment as an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1933 and a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1941.

Retirement Neave retired in 1946 to garden and farm in Essex but he carried on as honorary secretary of the Zoological Society of London until 1952. It was a position he had held since 1942.

‘NEAVE, Sheffield Airey’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 21 May 2011