Richard Herbert Foote (2 May 1918 – 9 February 2002) was an American entomologist who specialized in the taxonomy of fruit flies. The ''Handbook of the Fruit Flies of America North of Mexico'' published in 1993 was a major work. He was a promoter of the use of information technology for the cataloguing of insect species. Foote was born in

Bozeman, Montana Bozeman ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States. The 2020 United States census put Bozeman's population at 53,293, making it Montana's fourth-largest city. It is the principal city of the Bozeman, Montan ...

to Herbert and June. His father was a director of the water and sewage division of the Montana government and had been involved in management of typhoid. Foote graduated from

Montana State University Montana State University (MSU) is a public land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana, United States. It enrolls more students than any other college or university in the state. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's d ...

in 1941 and served in the US Army in Europe and worked in pest control after the war. He became a curator of medical insects at the CDC collection in Atlanta, Georgia in 1947. He received a ScD from

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

in 1952 with studies on mosquito larvae. He then joined the

US Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

to catalogue the medically important mosquitoes. In 1954 he shifted to the study of

Tephritidae The Tephritidae are one of two fly families referred to as fruit flies, the other family being the Drosophilidae. The family Tephritidae does not include the biological model organisms of the genus '' Drosophila'' (in the family Drosophilidae ...

and worked there until his retirement in 1983. He continued to work there and produced the ''Handbook of the Fruit Flies of America North of Mexico'' in 1993. He was also an editor of the ''Journal of Economic Entomology''. He was also an early adopter of computers and information technology for the cataloguing of taxonomic information.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Foote, Richard H. 1918 births 2002 deaths American entomologists People from Bozeman, Montana Johns Hopkins University alumni 20th-century American zoologists