Joseph Charles Bequaert

Joseph Charles Bequaert was an American naturalist of Belgian origin, born 24th May 1886 in Torhout (Belgium) and died on 19th January 1982 in Amherst (Massachusetts).

He obtained a doctorate in botany at the University of Ghent in 1908. He was entomologist, from 1910 to 1912 in "la commission belge sur la maladie du sommeil" (Belgian Committee on sleeping sickness). From 1913 to 1915 he worked as a botanist in the Belgian Congo and also collected Mollusks. In 1916 he emigrated to the United States. He was associate researcher from 1917 to 1922 in the American Museum of Natural History.Became an American citizen in 1921, he taught Entomology at the Harvard Medical School. From 1929 to 1956 he was curator of insects at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Professor of Zoology from 1951 to 1956 within the same institution.

Bequaert becomes president of the American Malacological Union in 1954. He left his post at Harvard in 1956. From 1956 to 1960, he lectured in biology at the University of Houston. With Walter Bernard Miller (1918-2000), he published The Mollusks of the Arid Southwest in 1973.

He was a member of various learned societies Zoological Society of France, the Entomological Society of America, the Belgian Royal Society of entomology, the Belgian Society of Tropical Medicine, the Royal Institute of colonial Belgium, Koninklijk Natuurwetenschappelijk Genootschap Dodonaea, Society natural history of North Africa.

Partial list of publications

* 1938 : A new North American mason-wasp from Virginia (Washington) : 79-87. 1938: "A new North-American mason wasp from Virginia" (Washington): 79-87.
* 1948 : Monograph of the Strophocheilidae, neotropical family of terrestrial mollusks, The Museum, Cambridge: 210 p.
* 1950 : Studies in the Achatininae, a group of African land snails , The Museum, Cambridge : 216 p
* 1973 : with Walter Bernard Miller (1918-2000), The mollusks of the arid Southwest, with an Arizona checklist, University of Arizona Press, Tucson: xvi + 271 p.