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DAVIS--A memorial service for world-renowned entomologist Richard M. Bohart, 93, a University of California, Davis entomologist who identified more than a million mosquitoes and wasps and founded the Bohart Museum of Entomology on the UC Davis campus, is scheduled Saturday, March 31 at the University Club.

The tribute will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. in the clubroom.

Dr. Bohart, who died Feb. 1 at a Berkeley hospital, retired in 1980 following a 32-year career at UC Davis. However, until the mid-1990s, he continued to help out at the Bohart Museum, a teaching, research and public service facility that he founded in 1946.

“Please bring your memories, photographs, experiences or anything else you would like to share about Doc,” said entomologist and professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and one of Dr. Bohart’s former students.

“Dr. Bohart, or ‘Doc’ as all of his students knew him, is the reason most of us became entomologists,” said Kimsey, who is coordinating the memorial service with Brenda Wing, executive assistant, Department of Entomology.

Many of the mosquitoes and wasps he collected are displayed at the Bohart Museum.

Said Walter Leal, chair of the Department of Entomology: "His legacy remains in the Bohart Museum. His insect specimens and financial support form the nucleus of the museum, which today houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America. The mosquito collection ranks as the second largest collection in North America and is, in fact, among the top three or four in the world."

Dr. Bohart identified and named more than 300 new species of insects, authored 230 separate publications, and wrote six books on mosquitoes and wasps, including three editions of Mosquitoes of California.

He has an entire family of insects named for him, Bohartillidae (twisted wing parasites), genus Bohartilla, described by Ragnar Kinzelbach of the Institute for Biological Sciences, University of Rostock, Germany.

Dr. Bohart spent his sabbaticals on entomological expeditions, visiting museums and collecting insects. In 1960 alone, he visited 21 museums in Europe and eastern United States. Other expeditions took him to South Africa, South America and Australia.

Born Sept. 28, 1913, in Palo Alto, he began collecting butterflies at age 7.  He received his doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley, where he also played on the Cal Bears football team as a linebacker. He taught at UCLA from 1938 to 1941, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps in 1941, serving as lieutenant commander of the Pacific Area and Washington D.C.

“During this time, he worked on the mosquitoes of the Pacific area and produced comprehensive documents on the mosquito fauna of Japan and China,” remembered Robert Washino, emeritus professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. Washino and Bohart co-authored the third edition of Mosquitoes of California.

Dr. Bohart taught not only entomology, medical entomology and general entomology, but also systematics and agricultural entomology. He chaired the Department of Entomology from 1956 to 1965.

“All of his students went on to be quite successful,” Kimsey said. “They dominated the field for a generation.”

They include a former chief and research leader of the Systematic Entomology Laboratory, U. S. Department of Food and Agriculture, Washington D. C. as well as four research entomologists with the same laboratory; the former chief of USDA’s Bee Biology and Systematic Laboratory, Logan, Utah; the former supervisory research entomologist of the Division of Vector-borne Viral Diseases, Ft. Collins, Colo.; a former dean of the college of agriculture, Universidad de Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela; a former chair of the UC Riverside Department of Entomology; professors in various universities throughout the country; and entomologists in state agricultural departments.

Dr. Bohart lived in Davis for more than three decades with his wife, Margaret, who died in January 1994. They had no children. Several years ago he moved to Hercules, Contra Costa County, with his second wife, Elizabeth Arias.

Dr. Bohart most recently returned to the UC Davis campus on May 15, 2006 when he received the International Society of Hymenopterists Distinguished Research Medal, one of three ever awarded. Hymenopteria is an order of insects that includes bees, wasps and ants.

The reception drew more than 50 former students and colleagues from throughout the United States, including Washington D.C., Kansas, Arizona, Oregon and California.

Scores of former students praised him at the reception. Retired entomologist Paul Marsh, of North Newton, Kan., who studied under Bohart beginning in 1957, said he was “extremely grateful for his influence on my career and his training and encouragement during my student days at Davis.”

Marsh said Dr. Bohart’s first love was wasps, and his second love was students. “He was always there when we needed advice or direction and always had words of encouragement when needed. No other professor in my college days had this combination of love for insects and for the students as did Dick.”

Dr. Bohart is survived by his second wife, Elizabeth Arias of Berkeley; sister-in-law, Adelaide Bohart of Logan, Utah, nieces Catherine Bohart Nelson of Salt Lake City; and Patricia Read Dillow of Benicia, Calif.; his nephew, John Thomas Read of Arcata, Calif.; his grand nephews Andrew of Houston, Texas, Eric Nelson of Honolulu, and Naiden Read of Arcata, Calif. ; and his grand nieces Tamsyn Dillow Campbell of Mare Island, Vallejo, Calif., and Geneva Anne Dillow of Sacramento, as well as myriad friends and colleagues.

Further information on the memorial is available from Kimsey at (530) 752-5373 or lskimsey@ucdavis.edu or from Wing at (530) 752-0492 at bkwing@ucdavis.edu.