Charles Duncan Michener
Encyclopedia
Charles Duncan Michener is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 entomologist
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...

 born in Pasadena, CA
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...

.

Biography

Much of his career has been devoted to the systematics
Systematics
Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...

 and natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 of bee
Bee
Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...

s. His first peer-reviewed publication was in 1934, at the age of 16. He received his B.S.
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 in 1939 and his Ph.D. in Entomology
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...

 in 1941, from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

. He remained in California until 1942, when he became an Assistant Curator of Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

 at the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. In 1944 he published a classification system for bees that was soon adopted worldwide, and was in use until 1993 and 1995, when he co-authored new classifications. From 1943 to 1946, Michener also served as a First Lieutenant and Captain in the United States Army Sanitary Corps, where he researched insect-borne diseases, and described the life cycle of the common chigger
Harvest mite
Trombicula is a genus of harvest mites in the Trombiculidae family. In their larval stage, they attach to various animals, including humans, and feed on skin, often causing itching...

. Michener joined the faculty of the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

 in 1948 as Associate Professor of Entomology. He was chairman of the Entomology Department from 1949 to 1961, and then again from 1972 to 1975. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 in 1955, and again in 1966. He was awarded the Watkins Distinguished Professor of Entomology in 1958, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 in 1965, and became Director of the Snow Entomological Museum (now a division within the University of Kansas Natural History Museum
University of Kansas Natural History Museum
The University of Kansas Natural History Museum is part of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, which is itself part of the KU Biodiversity Institute....

) in 1974. In February 2001, the Association of American Publishers
Association of American Publishers
The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the American book publishing industry. AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly...

 gave its prestigious R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional Reference or Scholarly Work of 2000 to Michener's opus, The Bees of the World.

Michener's work on social evolution in the Halictidae
Halictidae
Halictidae is a cosmopolitan family of the order Hymenoptera consisting of small to midsize bees which are usually dark-colored and often metallic in appearance...

 in the 1960s helped set the stage for the sociobiology
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...

 revolution of the 1970s, with E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....

 relying to a great degree on Michener's concepts regarding the paths from solitary to highly social life. Along with his research activities and teaching, Michener was the editor of the academic journals Evolution
Evolution (journal)
Evolution, the International Journal of Organic Evolution, is a leading monthly scientific journal that publishes significant new results of empirical or theoretical investigations concerning facts, processes, mechanics, or concepts of evolutionary phenomena and events. Evolution is published by...

 from 1962 to 1964, the associate editor of the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics from 1970 to 1985, and the American editor of Insectes Sociaux
Insectes Sociaux
Insectes sociaux is a scientific journal dedicated to the study of social insects. It is the official journal of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects , and is published by Birkhäuser Verlag....

 from 1954 to 1955, again from 1970 to 1985. He served as President of the Kansas Entomological Society in 1950, President of the Society for the Study of Evolution
Society for the Study of Evolution
The Society for the Study of Evolution is a professional organization of evolutionary biologists. It was formed in the United States in 1946 to promote evolution and the integration of various fields of science concerned with evolution and to organize the publication of a scientific journal to...

 in 1967, President of the Society of Systematic Zoology in 1968, and President of the American Society of Naturalists
American Society of Naturalists
The American Society of Naturalists was founded in 1883 and is one of the oldest professional societies dedicated to the biological sciences in North America...

 in 1978. In 1977 he began his term as the President of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects
International Union for the Study of Social Insects
International Union for the Study of Social Insects is an association of entomologists from different countries engaged in research of social insects...

 and organized the 9th International Congress in 1982. He is also an honorary member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
Brazilian Academy of Sciences
The Brazilian Academy of Sciences is the national academy of Brazil. It is headquartered in the city of Rio de Janeiro and was founded in 1916....

. At the time of his retirement in 1989, Michener had already published over 340 articles and books, primarily on bee systematics and biology; in the same year, a fund was started with the University of Kansas Endowment Association for a scientific lecture series in Michener's name. As of 2010, Dr. Michener is still active and continues to publish.

Michener's long career has also included the training of over 80 M.S. and Ph.D. students (to whom he is simply known as "Mich") who have had productive and often notable careers in entomology and taxonomy, among them Paul R. Ehrlich
Paul R. Ehrlich
Paul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist and educator who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera , but...

.

Selected bibliography

  • Michener, C.D. (1974). The Social Behavior of the Bees. Harvard University Press. 404 pp.
  • Michener, C.D. (2000). The Bees of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. 913 pp.
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