Andrew Delmar Hopkins

Andrew Delmar Hopkins (August 20, 1857 – September 22, 1948) was an American entomologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though self-taught, his scientific understanding of forest entomology was exceptional. He received an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University and in 1902 he went to work for the US Department of Agriculture. He was subsequently named head of the newly created Division of Forest Insect Investigations. He became a specialist in the bark beetle family Scolytidae, especially the genus Dendroctonus, species of which are the most destructive insects in coniferous forests of North America. His taxonomic monographs on these beetles are classics. He proposed the Law of Bioclimatics and he also developed the Hopkins Notes and Records System, a system he brought into the federal government when he first came to work for the Division of Entomology in the late 1890s. Hopkins’ research is one of the cornerstones of entomology on the North American continent and he is often referred to as the “father of North American forest entomology.”

A.D. Hopkins was born in Jackson County, Virginia (later Jackson County, West Virginia). His took an interest in nature from childhood, and by the age of twelve, he was collecting insects. This curiosity would eventually be channeled into an intense desire to study forest insects and the changes they effected in woodlands. Yet even though Hopkins was seminal in developing the scope of forest entomology in North America, his only formal education was in the county schools of West Virginia. After his schooling and at the age of 17, he took the reins of his grandfather's farm. His work organizing one of the first farm cooperatives during that period brought him to the attention of the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station. The State was looking for an entomologist and Hopkins volunteered, making it clear that the pay was not important to him, and asking only that he be allowed to work from his home. To alleviate the Station's concern that he wasn't professionally trained, he sent the director the manuscript he'd written about a local agricultural pest complete with his original drawings.

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