The wide range of topics that Theodore Cockerell studied is a reflection of his broad entomological and ecological interests, which he carried with him throughout his lifetime.
Growing up near London, England, Cockerell fostered a love for natural history by visiting museums, reading, and investigating the natural world with his father and brother. He was described as a sickly child, and after developing tuberculosis at age 20 he sailed to America in search of a climate that would cure his illness. He settled in Colorado where he pursued many aspects of entomology, botany, and zoology in general.
After three years he returned to England to work in the British Museum. There he was greatly influenced by many great naturalists including Alfred Russell Wallace. Soon he was appointed curator of the Public Museum in Kingston, Jamaica, where he moved in 1891. It was there that he first became interested in scale insects. After several years in Jamaica the tuberculosis reappeared, so Cockerell returned to the U.S. where he took a position at the New Mexico College of Agriculture at Las Cruces as Entomologist of the Experiment Station and Professor of Entomology and Zoology.
Cockerell is perhaps best known for his work on North American bees, but he contributed greatly to other areas of entomology as well. He wrote over 3,000 articles and notes on bees, scales insects, fossil plants, fossil insects, biography, geology, and other subjects. He found coccids especially interesting because of their economic importance and also because of the way they exemplified evolution through reduction, suppression, and the modification of parts.
Cockerell eventually moved to Colorado where he was Curator of the Museum at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, and then a professor of Zoology and Entomology at the University of Colorado at Boulder until his retirement in 1934. Even after retiring from the university, Cockerell pursued his interest in the natural history of all organisms, and continued to publish numerous notes and articles until his death at his home in San Diego in 1948.
The letters preserved in the Bohart Museum and included on this CD show Cockerell as a lively correspondent who was generous with his exchanges of information and specimens.
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Copyright Bohart Entomology Museum 2003