Graham Fairchild

Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild (1906–1994) was an American entomologist, and a member of the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut and one of two grandsons of the scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, for whom he was named, and son of David Fairchild, a botanist and plant explorer.

Alexander ("Sandy" to his friends and family) was born in 1906 in Washington, D.C. Like most entomologists, Fairchild began his lifelong love affair with insects by collecting butterflies in the fields and forests where he lived. At the age of 15, now an avid butterfly collector, young Fairchild was first introduced to the intensely fecund, immensely complex world of the American ("New World") tropical forests by his father, who was helping with starting the Barro Colorado Tropical Research Station in Panama. After a long canoe ride up the Chagres River in Panama, he became permanently hooked on the tropics. After a number of magical years travelling with his plant collector father to the jungles of Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and Indonesia, Sandy reluctantly finished high school at age 21, to then attend Harvard, graduating in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression.

With few to no jobs available, Sandy began working toward a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard. Encouraged by his faculty advisor, Professor Joseph Bequaert, Fairchild chose the Tabanidae, a family of insects known as "horse flies". Tabanids are worldwide, numerous, and taxonomically complex. Since some feed on humans and thus may carry diseases, Fairchild realized this specialty could get him a job in the tropics. Since he first fell in love with the tropics in Panama, he wrote his thesis, naturally, on the Tabanidae of Panama.

...
Wikipedia