Abstract
THE name of E. E. Austen will live as that of a pioneer in the study of Diptera. Educated at Rugby and at the University of Heidelberg, he joined the staff of the British Museum in 1889 as the first curator to have sole and undivided charge of the collections of that order of insects. His first publication (January 1893) was upon a section of the family Syrphidse (hover-flies), and his second (May 1895) upon the Œstrid genus Cutiterebra (American botflies parasitic upon rodents). Quite early in his official career, however, he must have realized that the great amount of undescribed material and the necessity for intensive study made the Diptera as a whole too wide a field for research, and, as at that time the importance of Diptera as vectors of disease was beginning to be understood, he wisely decided to restrict his researches mainly to blood-sucking flies and certain other groups of medical or veterinary importance. It therefore came about that the revision of the Syrphidse which he had planned was never continued, though he retained his interest in the Œstridse, publishing several papers on the family so recently as 1933–34.
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R., N., E., F. Major E. E. Austen, D.S.O.. Nature 141, 358–359 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141358a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141358a0
