Guido Nonveiller

Infobox_Scientist
name = Guido Nonveiller


image_width =
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1913|06|05|mf=y
birth_place = Croatia,
residence = Belgrade, Serbia,
death_date = Death date and age|2002|04|07|1913|06|05
field = Entomology
work_institutions = International Brigades, Fao, Ordre des Palmes Académiques

Guido Nonveiller (05 June 1913, Rijeka Belgrade - 07 April 2002) was a Croatian entomologist, International Brigades officer, United Nations expert and professor at the University of Belgrade. He was known for his political and scientific activism and perhaps as the world authority for the African and Palaearctic Mutillidae (velvet ants).

Life

Born in Rijeka of a father who worked as a chemist, travelled a lot and educated his two children in Rijeka, Vienna and Split. In 1927, Nonveiller's mother introduces him to Peter Novak, an early Croatian entomologist, who made a lasting effect on the young boy and stimulated a passion for insects. At sixteen (1929) he discovered his first new insect species on Biokovo mountains. The same year it was neamed after him - Trechus nonveilleri by Giuseppe Miller from Trieste.

In his early twenties, during probation work at the University of Belgrade, he developed an interest for politics and engaged in different students movements that led him to fight in the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance during World War II. He acted as a soldier and officer in International Brigades from 1937 to 1939 in Spain, as the officer of the Resistance Movement from 1943 and 1944, and as the first Yugoslav ambassador in France after the war(1944-1945).

In 1945, he returned to the University of Belgrade, where he taught from 1946 to 1960. He founded and directed the Federal Institute for Plant Protection of Yugoslavia. He also held a head of the Plant Protection Service and the Yugoslav Federal Ministry from 1947 to 1949. In 1960, as plant protection officer, he moved to Tunis, and in 1962 as United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization expert to Yaounde, Cameroon.

In 1989 he was made Commandeur of l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, the highest level of the academic honor given out by the French government.

From 1992 to 1996, in his early eighties, he moved to France and published over 20 papers on his work at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris.

In 2006 the Croatian Entomological society named their bibiographical database Nonveilleriana in his memory

Work

Nonveiller was a world authority on the African and Palaearctic Mutillidae and Bradynobaenidae (Hymenoptera), a leading specialist for several groups of Coleotera of the Balkans and adjacent areas and a prominent expert in economic entomology and historigraphy of his time.

In the late 1980, despite his age, Nonveiller was among the world pioneers in application of personal computers in entomology. He started with Commodore 64 in 1983. [Stefano de Nonveiller, Genuine polyglot.]

Publications

Nonveiller wrote and published in German, French, English, Italian, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian, resulting in more than 150 publications, description of 33 new general/subgenera and over 330 new species-group taxa assembling one of the world largest collection of African Mutillids including more than 120,000 specimens collected by himself and his wife Nadezda in Cameroon. [Stefano de Nonveiller, Genuine polyglot.]

Bibliography

* Nonveiller, G. (1995). "Recherches sur les mutillides de l'afrique xvii. note pour servier a la connaissance du genre Pristomutilla ashmead, 1903". (hymenoptera, mutillidae). Entomofauna, 16:29-120.
* Guido Nonveiller (2001). "Pioneers of the Research on the Insects of Dalmatia". Croatian Natural History Museum (Zagreb): 390.
* G. Nonveiller (2004) "Memoir". University of Belgrade

External links

* At Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Pioneers-Research-Insects-Dalmatia/dp/9536645041/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208324487&sr=8-2
* Croatian entomological Database http://www.agr.hr/hed/hrv/bibl/osobe/osobeFR.htm
* At Googlebooks: http://books.google.com/books?id=3RoJUIunQ-UC&pg=PA827&lpg=PA827&dq=nonveiller&source=web&ots=H7uPAWLwQm&sig=VO8b7vkx-gncu9heouE5ZIkj4j4
* Family Mutillidae: http://www.zmuc.dk/EntoWeb/collections-databaser/Hymenoptera/Mutillidae%20first%20half%20of%20genera.htm
* Trechus nonveilleri: http://www.zipcodezoo.com/Animals/T/Trechus_nonveilleri.asp