Sheffield Airey Neave CMG OBE (20 April 1879 – 31 December 1961) was a British naturalist and entomologist. Neave was the grandson of Sheffield Neave, a governor of the Bank of England and he was the father of

Airey Neave Lieutenant Colonel Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, () (23 January 1916 – 30 March 1979) was a British soldier, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) from 1953 until his assassination in 1979. During the Second World War he was the first ...

Early life

Born in

Kensworth Kensworth is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish located in the Central Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England. The parish is located on the edge of Dunstable Downs, and includes the Hamlet (place), hamlets of Californi ...

in Hertfordshire on 20 April 1879, he was the son of Sheffield Henry M. Neave and his wife Gertrude Charlotte Margaret (née Airey). He was educated at Eton and

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by Bishop of Winchester William of Waynflete. It is one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, as of 2022, and ...

Africa

Neave's first work was research into the problems related to the

tsetse fly Tsetse ( , or ) (sometimes spelled tzetze; also known as tik-tik flies) are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus ''Glossina'', which are placed in their own family, Gloss ...

and the study of African animal life. He was part of the Geodetic Survey of Northern Rhodesia between 1904 and 1905. Between 1906 and 1908 he was part of the Katanga

Sleeping Sickness African trypanosomiasis is an insect-borne parasitic infection of humans and other animals. Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), also known as African sleeping sickness or simply sleeping sickness, is caused by the species '' Trypanosoma b ...

Commission and then from 1909 to 1913 the Entomological Research Committee of Tropical Africa. While he collected in Eastern Africa, fellow collector James Jenkins Simpson collected from West Africa.

Entomologist and name compilation activities

Neave returned to the United Kingdom in 1913 and was appointed assistant director of the Imperial Institute of Entomology, becoming director from 1942 to 1946. He was rewarded for his contribution to entomology with an appointment as an

officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

in 1933 and a

companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince of Wales (the future King George IV), while he was acting as prince regent for his father, King George III ...

in 1941. From 1918 until 1933 he was honorary secretary of the

Royal Entomological Society The Royal Entomological Society is a learned society devoted to the study of insects. It aims to disseminate information about insects and to improve communication between entomologists. The society was founded in 1833 as the Entomological S ...

and was its president in 1934–35. In 1934 he had the idea to compile an updated index of all published generic and subgeneric names in zoology, an activity which occupied the period 1935–1939 and resulted in the publication of his (initially) four-volume ''

Nomenclator Zoologicus ' is one of the major compendia (in this case, of the names of genera and subgenera) in the field of zoological nomenclature, compiled by Sheffield Airey Neave and his successors and published in 9 volumes over the period 1939–1994, under the au ...

'' in 1939–1940. He also oversaw the preparation of a fifth volume, published in 1950, and with the work of others, the work eventually ran to 9 print volumes (covering names published between 1753 and 1994) plus an additional tenth, electronic-only compilation, completed by Thomson Reuters in 2004. The entire work was subsequently digitised by the uBio project in the US and made available for web-based query in 2004–2005.

Retirement

Neave retired in 1946 to garden and farm in Essex but he carried on as honorary secretary of the Zoological Society of London until 1952. It was a position he had held since 1942.

Family life

Neave married twice, firstly to Dorothy Middleton and they had two sons and three daughters, the eldest is

later a Member of Parliament. Dorothy died in 1942 and Neave married secondly to Mary Hodges in 1946 in London.

References

* ‘NEAVE, Sheffield Airey’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 200
accessed 21 May 2011
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Neave, Sheffield Airey 1879 births 1961 deaths Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George Officers of the Order of the British Empire Secretaries of the Zoological Society of London People educated at Eton College Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford People from Hertfordshire (before 1965) People from Essex