Robert Newstead (11 September 1859 – 17 February 1947) was a British entomologist, naturalist, and archaeologist. He taught himself entomology, wrote a monograph on the

scale insect Scale insects are small insects of the Order (biology), order Hemiptera, suborder Sternorrhyncha. Of dramatically variable appearance and extreme sexual dimorphism, they comprise the infraorder Coccomorpha which is considered a more convenient g ...

s and later served as a professor of medical entomology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Newstead was born in

Swanton Abbott Swanton Abbott is a village and civil parish in the district of North Norfolk. It has an area of and a population of 565 at the 2011 Census (including Westwick). The village lies south of North Walsham, south of the seaside town of Cromer a ...

, Norfolk where his father worked as a butler to Boulton of Oulton Hall. His father later became a gardener at

Sedgeford Sedgeford is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk, about 5 miles south of the North Sea and east of the Wash. It is 36 miles northwest of Norwich. Its area of had a population, including Fring, of 613 at the 2011 Ce ...

and young Newstead was introduced early to the world of plants and natural history. Newstead went to school but quit at the age of ten to work as a gardener, followed by work in a press, and as a telegraphist. He returned to gardening in 1883 for Osten Walker, an amateur naturalist. Walker paid for his studies and encouraged him to work at the newly founded Grosvenor Museum, Chester. He also encouraged Newstead to study the scale insects which built his repute as an entomologist. He was then given a grant to collect Coccidae from around Britain. For some time, Newstead worked as an assistant to

Eleanor Ormerod Eleanor Anne Ormerod (11 May 182819 July 1901) was a pioneer English entomologist. Based on her studies in agriculture, she became one of the first to define the field of agricultural entomology. She published an influential series of articles on ...

, helping her compile lists of injurious insects for her annual reports. In 1905 he became a lecturer in medical entomology at the

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is a post-graduate teaching and research institution based in Liverpool, England, established in 1898. It was the first institution in the world dedicated to the study of tropical medicine. LSTM ...

and in 1911 he held the Dutton Chair of Entomology at Liverpool. During World War I, he was involved in insect control on the front in France and Flanders. Newstead also took an interest in archaeology, especially working on the digs to examine the Roman remains in Chester between 1926 and 1929. He served as Chester City Magistrate from 1913 to 1946.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Newstead, Robert 1859 births 1947 deaths English entomologists Fellows of the Royal Society