John Obadiah Westwood

Who was John Obadiah Westwood?

John Obadiah Westwood was an English entomologist and archaeologist also noted for his artistic talents.

Born in Sheffield, he studied to be a lawyer but abandoned that for his scientific interests.

He became a curator and later professor at Oxford University, having been nominated by this friend and patron the Reverend Frederick William Hope, whose donation was the basis of the Hope Collection at Oxford. He was also a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Westwood was a Fellow of the Linnean Society and president of the Entomological Society of London.

Among the prominent writers and naturalists he associated with was James Rennie, whom he assisted in the editing of Gilbert White's The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in 1833.

On December 30, 1892, not long after returning home from a convention in London, Westwood had suddenly collapsed of a cerebral hemorrhage which left him hospitalized. He slipped into a coma just one day later and died on January 2, 1893. His funeral took place a week later on January 9, 1893 and was interred that same day in an unknown location.