Edward Philpott Mumford
| Edward Philpott Mumford | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| File:Mumford, Edward Philpott.jpg | |||||||
| Born | 1902 | ||||||
| Died | 1977 | ||||||
| Residence | Jesus College, Oxford | ||||||
| Occupation | entomologist | ||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1936.03.24 nominated
Notes From Elsewhere
Edward P. Mumford (1902-1977)
Edward Philpott Mumford Dr. Edward P. Mumford, 1902-1977. The death of Dr. Edward P. Mumford was announced to the Hawaiian Entomological Society at the October 1975 meeting, but he had died earlier that year in San Rafael, California. With his passing the Society lost an old and faithful friend, and the biological sciences of the Pacific lost a distinguished contributor. His association with the Society and the Pacific dates from 1927, when he was appointed Director of the Pacific Entomological Survey in succession to Dr. C. F. Baker, who had accepted the post earlier but had died in the Philippine Islands before being able to undertake his duties. The Pacific Entomological Survey was a cooperative project financed jointly by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, the Association of Hawaiian Pineapple Canners, and Bernice P. Bishop Museum. Headquarters of the Survey were in Honolulu, and records show that Mumford visited the city briefly in 1927 and was nominated for membership in the Hawaiian Entomological Society at the December meeting of that year. His name remained on the roster of the Society until 1963; but although he corresponded frequently with some of the members, there are few who knew him personally, as his life and career developed mostly in California. His only extended sojourn in Hawaii occurred during 1932 and early 1933, when he and Dr. Martin Adamson, who had been studying the fauna of the Marquesas Islands with him, worked on their accumulated collections for several months at the Bishop Museum. Unfortunately, Dr. Mumford's health had been undermined by the harsh climate and conditions of his field work and he was forced to seek recuperation in the cool climate of California, whence he did not return. After his stint with the Pacific Entomological Survey, Mumford took up residence in Palo Alto and extended his studies, under the aegis of Ray Lyman Wilbur of Stanford University, to include the world distribution of pathogenic parasites of man. These studies led him to become the principal promoter of Stanford's Pacific Islands Research War Project and to contribute a number of publications to the project. One of these was a "Preliminary Report on Parasitic and Other Infectious Diseases of the Japanese Mandated Islands and Guam," written in collaboration with Dr. John Mohr and published in 1943 in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine. Another one, published in the same journal in the following year, was a "Manual on the Distribution of Communicable Diseases and their Vectors in the Tropical Pacific Islands." Although many other papers by Mumford on the distribution of parasitic diseases appeared later, mostly in the British Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the "Manual" should probably be considered his most notable and useful publication, as it was a basic reference work for the Allied Forces during the second World War and is still in use in medical schools of the United States and Canada. Mumford was born in Lancashire, England, in 1902, and before coming to the United States, had obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Cambridge University in 1926 and a Master of Science degree from Victoria College, Toronto, Canada, in 1929. At the conclusion of the second World War, he returned to England and continued his studies on biogeography at Jesus College, Oxford University, where he was granted a Ph.D. in 1948. Later in the same year he joined the faculty of Dominican College, San Rafael, California, as Professor of Biology and Department Chairman, and he held that office until his retirement in 1971, when the College honored him with a position as Research Scholar in Residence, a position in which he continued to contribute papers to the field of biogeography until his death in 1977. Dr. Mumford was, for many years, Administrator of the William Bryant Mum- ford Memorial Fund, which was established in memory of Edward's brother, who was one of the founders of the United Nations Organization. The grants and honors which he received during his fruitful career were numerous, as were the societies and organizations in which he was active at one time or another. A partial list of the former would include grants from the Royal Society, Fund for Higher Studies at Oxford, National Academy of Sciences, Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation; and among the latter would be the Oxford and Cambridge Union, of which Mumford was a Life Member, the Royal Entomological Society, of which he was a Fellow, the Royal Geographical Society, the London Zoological Society, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, the Societe de Biogeographie, the Sigma Xi Honorary Fraternity, the Faculty Club of the University of California, and the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation, of which Mumford was Senior Research Associate from 1960 to 1971. Dr. Mumford was married in Palo Alto in 1960, and he is survived by Mrs. Iris G. Mumford, who resides in San Rafael, California. F.A. Bianchi. [Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society 23(1): 153-154, 1979]
Publications
External Publications
Mosquitoes, malaria and the war in the Pacific IN Science, Aug 28 1942
Terrestrial and Fresh‐Water Fauna of the Marquesas Islands.
A new species of Ischnura (order Odonata); a dragon-fly nymph possibly Agriocnemis Selys, and other records from Tahiti IN Annals and Magazine of Natural History vol. 9 issue 56, 1942