John Henry Comstock

John Henry Comstock was an eminent researcher in entomology and arachnology and a leading educator. His work provided the basis for classification of butterflies, moths, and scale insects. He was born on February 24, 1849, in Janesville, Wisconsin. He entered Cornell University as a student in 1869, a year after the school was founded. He also took classes at Harvard University in the summer of 1872 and at Yale University in 1875. In 1871, while still a student, Comstock became an assistant to professor Burton Green Wilder. In 1872, in the absence of a professor in entomology, students submitted a petition requesting that Comstock be given permission to deliver a course of lectures upon "Insects Injurious to Vegetation". The lectures were successful, and Comstock was appointed instructor of entomology in 1873. He received his Bachelor of Science in June 1874, and was made an assistant professor in 1876. In 1878 Comstock married Anna Botsford, who also studied entomology and collaborated with him on many publications. Both became professors of Nature Studies at Cornell. Anna Botsford Comstock was the first female professor at Cornell. Comstock worked at Vassar College from 1877 to 1879. Between 1879 and 1881 he became the chief Entomologist of the USDA in Washington, D.C. In 1882 Comstock returned to Cornell as professor of Entomology and Invertebrate Zoology. He also did work in insect morphology and is best known as the co-proposer of the Comstock-Needham system of insect wing venation with James George Needham. In 1898-1899, Comstock studied at the University of Leipzig. In 1893, John Henry Comstock and Simon Henry Gage founded the Comstock Publishing Company in order to make textbooks on microscopy, histology, and entomology available at a reasonable price to students and to publish the works of Anna Botsford Comstock on nature study. Comstock was a member or honorary member or fellow of the Entomological Society of France, the Entomological Society of Belgium, and the Entomological Society of London. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society. He died on March 20, 1931, in Ithaca, New York.