Papers of Joseph Charles Bequaert

Joseph Charles Corneille Bequaert (1886-1982), Belgian-American botanist and entomologist, worked at Harvard University from 1925 to 1956, as a professor of medical entomology and curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He received his PhD in botany from the University of Ghent in 1908, then traveled to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to work on the Belgian Sleeping Sickness Commission from 1910 to 1912. He remained in the Congo as head of botanical explorations for the Belgian Colonial Government from 1913 to 1915. The following year, he relocated to the United States to work in a research position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

In 1923, Bequaert joined the faculties of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor in medical entomology, where he remained until 1945. He then accepted the position of Curator of Recent Insects at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1951, he was appointed Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, a position he held until 1956. While at Harvard, he embarked on several field work expeditions, including the Hamilton Rice Seventh Expedition to the Amazon from 1924 to 1925, and one to the Yucatán in 1931.

After leaving Harvard, Bequaert lectured in biology at the University of Houston from 1956 to 1960, then relocated to Tucson, Arizona, where worked at the University of Arizona in the entomology and zoology departments. Throughout his career, he published more than 250 scientific papers. He died in 1982.