Harold Maxwell-Lefroy
Encyclopedia
Harold Maxwell-Lefroy was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
entomologist. He was a Professor of Entomology at Imperial College London
Imperial College London
Imperial College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, specialising in science, engineering, business and medicine...
.
Biography
He was born on 20 January 1877, and attended King's College, CambridgeKing's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
graduating in 1895.
In 1903, Lefroy was appointed entomologist to the Government of India (succeeding Lionel de Nicéville
Lionel de Nicéville
Charles Lionel Augustus de Nicéville was a curator at the Indian Museum in Calcutta . He studied the butterflies of South Asia and wrote a three volume monograph on the butterflies of India, Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka.Born in a noble Huguenot family, his father was a physician. He was educated...
, who was the first entomologist, appointed in 1901). Then in 1905 he was involved in the creation of the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute
Indian Agricultural Research Institute
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute is India's premier national Institute for agricultural research, education and extension. It has served the cause of science and society with distinction through first rate research, generation of appropriate technologies and development of human resources...
in Pusa, in the Indian state of Bihar, and he was appointed the first Imperial Entomologist.
Lefroy convened a series of meetings on an all-India basis, to bring together all the entomologists of the country. From 1915, five such meetings were held at the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute, and these formed the foundation of entomological knowledge in India. He was succeeded in the position of Imperial Entomologist by Thomas Fletcher
Thomas Bainbrigge Fletcher
Thomas Bainbrigge Fletcher was an English entomologist. He was a naval paymaster until 1910 and was later appointed Imperial entomologist in India, succeeding Harold Maxwell-Lefroy. He took great interest in various aspects of entomology in India, especially those of economic importance. He also...
.
In the early 1920s, Lefroy was asked by Sir Frank Baines
Frank Baines
Sir Frank Baines, KCVO, CBE, FRIBA was at one time the architect heading Her Majesty's Office of Works.His most famous work was Thames House and its neighbour Imperial Chemical House in London, England...
, Principal Architect of the Office of Works, to study ways of exterminating death watch beetle
Death watch beetle
The death watch beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, is a woodboring beetle. The adult beetle is long, while the xylophagous larvae are up to long....
s that had been found in Westminster Hall, beside England's Houses of Parliament. As a result, he went on to devise various successful formulations for pest control, and in time Lefroy began receiving regular orders from people who had heard about his work. In 1924, Lefroy and his assistant Miss Elizabeth Eades started supplying bottles of woodworm fluid from a small factory in Hatton Garden, which later led to the formation by them of a company called Rentokil Limited
Rentokil Initial
Rentokil Initial is a major British business services group. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.-History:...
(now Rentokil Initial) in 1925.
Lefroy was accidentally killed by poisonous fumes in a laboratory accident later that year.
Publications
- Indian Insect Pests (1906) reprinted in 1971 by Today and Tomorrow Publishers
- Maxwell-Lefroy, H. 1909. Indian Insect Life: a Manual of the Insects of the Plains (Tropical India) Thacker and Spink, Calcutta. xii + 786 pp.
- Maxwell-Lefroy, H. 1910. List of Names Used in India for Common Insects Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, India. iv + 47 + xii pp.