Harold Oldroyd was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 entomologist

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

, born in 1914. He specialised in the biology of flies

Fly

True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...

, and wrote many books, especially popular science

Popular science

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...

 that helped entomology to reach a broader public. His "The Natural History of Flies" is considered to be the "fly Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

". Although his speciality was the Diptera, he acknowledged that they are not a popular topic: "Breeding in dung, carrion, sewage and even living flesh, flies are a subject of disgust...not to be discussed in polite society". It was Oldroyd who proposed the idea of hyphen

Hyphen

The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

ating the names of true flies (Diptera) to distinguish them from other insects with "fly" in their names. Thus, the "house-fly", "crane-fly" and "blow-fly

Blow-fly

Calliphoridae are insects in the Order Diptera, family Calliphoridae...

" would be true flies

Fly

True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...

, while the "dragonfly

Dragonfly

A dragonfly is a winged insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera . It is characterized by large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and an elongated body...

", "scorpion fly" and so on belong to other order

Order (biology)

In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...

s. He also debunked the calculation that a single pair of house-flies, if allowed to reproduce without inhibitions could, within nine months, number 5.6×10¹² individuals, enough to cover the Earth to a thickness of 14.3 m (47 ft). Oldroyd calculated that such a layer would only cover Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, but remarked "that is still a lot of flies".

All the following lists are potentially incomplete. Please add to them if you know of more.

Papers by Oldroyd

• Cookson H. A., and Oldroyd H. 1937: Intestinal infestation by larvae of a drone fly. Lancet 2: 804.
• Oldroyd H., 1940: The genus Hoplistomerus Macquart (Diptera: Asilidae). 5 figs., 12 pp. Trans. R. ent. Soc. Lond.
• Oldroyd, H. 1947a: Results of Armstrong College expedition to Siwa Oasis (Libyan desert), 1935. - Bulletin de la Société Fouad Ier d'Entomologie 31: 113-120, Kairo.
• Oldroyd, H. 1947b: The Diptera of the Territory of New Guinea. XIV. Family Tabanidae. Part II. Pangoniinae, except the genus Chrysops. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 72: 125-42.
• Oldroyd, H. 1949a. A wingless empid (Diptera) from Tasmania. Entomol. Mon. Mag. 84: 278-79.
• Oldroyd, H. 1949b. The Diptera of the Territory of New Guinea. XIV. Family Tabanidae. Part III. Tabaninae. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 73: 304-61.
• Oldroyd, H. 1952: A new Chrysops (Diptera, Tabanidae) from the British Cameroons. Ann Trop Med Parasitol. 1952 Sep;46(2):155-7.
• Oldroyd, H. 1952. The horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae) of the Ethiopian Region. Volume I. Haematopota and Hippocentrum. British Museum (Natural History), London. ix + 226 pp.
• Oldroyd, H. 1954. The horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae) of the Ethiopian Region. Volume II. Tabanus and related genera. British Museum (Natural History), London. x + 341 pp.
• Oldroyd, H. 1955. The Diptera of Auckland and Campbell islands. Part 4. A wingless dolichopodid (Diptera) from Campbell Island. Rec. Dominion Mus. 2: 243-46.
• Oldroyd, H. 1956. A new genus and species of Dolichopodidae (Diptera) from Malaya. Proc. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (B) 25: 210-11.
• Oldroyd, H. 1957: The horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae) of the Ethiopian Region. Volume III. Subfamilies
• Oldroyd, H. 1958, Some Asilidae from Iran. Stuttg. Beitr. Naturk., No. 9:1–10
• Oldroyd, H. 1963: The Tribes and genera of the African Asilidae (Diptera). Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde aus dem Staatlichen Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart. Nr. 107.
• Oldroyd, H. 1964: Diptera from Nepal. Asilidae. Bull. Br. Mus. (Nat. Hist.) Entomol. 15: 237-54.
• Oldroyd, H. 1969: The family Leptogastridae (Diptera). Proc. R. ent. Soc. Lond. (B) 38: 27-31.
• Oldroyd, H. 1970: Studies of African Asilidae (Diptera). Bulletin of the British Museum.
• Oldroyd, H. 1972. Robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae) of the Philippine Islands. Pac. Insects 14: 201-37.
• Oldroyd, H. 1972: Two robber flies (Diptera, Asilidae) of unusual structure. - Journal of Natural History 6: 635-642; London.
• Oldroyd, H. 1974. An introduction to the robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae) of South Africa. Annals of the Natal Museum 22: 1-171.

Books by Oldroyd

• 1939: Edwards, Oldroys and Smart: British Blood-sucking flies. 156 pp
• 1965: The Natural History of Flies. New York: W. W. Norton.
• 1968: Elements of entomology. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-76453-5
• 1969: Handbook for the identification of British Insects. Diptera Brachycera. Sections Tabanoidea and Asiloidea. Royal Entomological Society of London. 132 pp.
• January 1970: Collecting, Preserving and Studying Insects (2nd edition). Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-023663-7
• 1970: Elements of entomology: An introduction to the study of insects ([The Universe natural history]). Universe Books. ISBN 0-87663-127-8
• 1970: Diptera: Introduction and Key to Families. In the "Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects Series" (1970)
• June 1973: Insects and Their World. Paperback . Univ of Chicago Pr. ISBN 0-226-62636-9
• Insects and Their World. ISBN 0-565-05394-9. British Museum (Natural History).
• September 1976: Insects in Your Garden (Puffin Books). Paperback. Puffin Books. ISBN 0-14-030874-1
• date unknown: Ladybirds

Book chapters by Oldroyd

• 1964 (O. Theodor
  Oskar Theodor
  Oskar Theodor was an Israeli entomologist who specialised in Diptera.Born in Königsberg, Eastern Prussia he came to pre-Israel...
  
  and H. Oldroyd): Hippoboscidae. In Lindner, E. [Ed.]: Die Fliegen der paläarktischen Region - Stuttgart, 12: 1-70.
• 1973 (Oldroyd H, and Smith KGV): Diptera: Eggs and larvae of flies. In Smith KGV (ed.) Insects and other arthropods of medical importance. 1st ed. The trustees of the British Museum (Natural History) London, 1973; p. 289-323.
• 1975: Family Asilidae. In "A catalogue of the Diptera of the Oriental Region, Vol. II, Suborder Brachycera through Division Aschiza, Suborder Cyclorrhapha" (M.D. Delfinado and D.E. Hardy, eds.). University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu. 459 pp

Translations by Oldroyd

• Insects In Flight : A Glimpse Behind The Scenes In Biophysical Research / by Werner Nachtigall ; Translators: Harold Oldroyd, Roger H. Abbott [And] Marguerite Biederman-Thors 1974
• World Of An Insect by Remy Chauvin. Translated from the French. World Univ. Library/Mcgraw, New York, 1967, Trade Paperback, pp256.

Taxa named by Oldroyd

Andrenosoma cornuta Oldroyd, 1972

Apterachalcus borboroides (Oldroyd, 1956)

Apterodromia Oldroyd

Betrequia ocellata Oldroyd

Dipseliopoda biannulata (Oldroyd, 1953)

Entisia tarsata Oldroyd, 1968

Heteropogon asiaticus Oldroyd, 1963

Lamyra greatheadi Oldroyd

Lamyra rossi Oldroyd

Melanothereva blackmani Oldroyd, 1968

Oxynoton arnaudi Oldroyd

Pachyrrhiza argentata Oldroyd, 1968

Stiphrolamyra rubicunda Oldroyd, 1947

Taxa named after Oldroyd (not all are still valid)

Amblypsilopus oldroydi (Haider, 1957)

Gigantosciapus oldroydi Grichanov, 1997

Irwiniella oldroydi Lyneborg, 1976

Sciapus oldroydi Haider, 1957

External links

• A picture of Harold Oldroyd