William Harris Ashmead

Who was William Harris Ashmead?

William Harris Ashmead was an American entomologist born on 19 September 1855 at Philadelphia. He died 17 October 1908 at Washington D.C.

After his studies in Philadelphia, Ashmead worked for the publisher J. B. Lippincott Co. Later, he settled in Florida where he formed his own publishing house devoted to agriculture. He also launched the Florida Dispatch, an agricultural weekly magazine which included a headed section devoted to injurious insects. In 1879, he began writing papers for scientific publications and, in 1887, he became a field entomologist working for the Ministry for the Agriculture of Florida. The following year, he became entomologist at the Agricultural Research station of Lake City. In 1889, he worked again for the Ministry for Agriculture. The following year, and for two years, he traveled, in particular to Germany, to perfect his entomological knowledge.

In 1895, he obtained the post of conservation assistant in the Department of Entomology of the U.S. National Museum, a position he occupied until his death. He was mainly a systematic entomologist who worked on many groups of insects, but particularly on Hymenoptera and he published approximately 260 articles in various scientific reviews.