Alexander Steven Corbet

Who was Alexander Steven Corbet?

Alexander Steven Corbet was a British chemist and naturalist. He was educated at Bournemouth and University College, Reading, where he received a PhD in inorganic chemistry. In the late 1920s he and his wife, Irene, moved to Kuala Lumpur where Alexander worked as a soil microbiologist for the Rubber Research Institute of Malaya. There he became an expert on Malaysian butterflies, co-authoring The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula with H.M. Pendlebury in 1934. In 1931 he and his family returned to the UK and Alexander worked at the ICI research station at Jealotts Hill. He later became deputy keeper of entomology at the British Museum. Both of his children acquired his interest in entomology: his son Philip Steven Corbet became an authority on dragonflies and his daughter Sarah Steven Corbet is an authority on British bumble bees and plant pollination. Alexander Steven Corbet died of heart failure in 1948.