William Doherty

Who was William Doherty?

William Doherty was an American entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera and later also collected birds for the Natural History Museum at Tring.

He collected butterflies in India, Burma, the Andaman Islands, Nicobar, Siam, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and British East Africa and described many new species. He also collected birds for Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild.

His collections are shared between the American Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Brooklyn Museum, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Many of the birds he collected for Lord Rothschild were named after him, including Doherty's Bushshrike Malaconotus dohertyi, Red-naped Fruit Dove Ptilinopus dohertyi, Sumba Cicadabird Coracina dohertyi and Crested White-eye Lophozosterops dohertyi.