Allan Frost Archer

Allan Frost Archer (January 22, 1908 – 1994, fl. 1940–1971), U.S. arachnologist, entomologist and malacologist. He was the curator of Arachnida at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, University, Alabama. Archer was active in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially between 1940 and 1971, when he described numerous species of arachnids and snails in a number of states in the United States and elsewhere. The World Spider Catalog lists 29 genera of spiders named by Archer, of which 16 are still accepted as of September 2016.

Allen Frost Archer was the author of about 26 scientific papers and was responsible for describing a number of terrestrial snail taxa in his malacological career which spanned over 30 years. His specimen collection of 1600 lots of terrestrial snails seems to have passed to Dr. John C. Hurd (LaGrange College, Georgia) and subsequently to the Auburn University Natural History Learning Center and Museum (AUNHLCM) in 2002. Many of the specimens in the collection are too old to have been collected by Dr. Archer and so were presumably obtained by trading with museums. Dr. Archer's collecting activities were mainly in southeastern North America but during the later years of his life he made collections from throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and many Pacific and Caribbean Islands.

He was married to Mableanne Hanson on 31 July 1942. His son Allan Frost Archer junior was born in Decatur, Alabama on 23 December 1943 and was ordained into the Orthodox church as a priest in 1996 and took the name Aaron.