Citizenship United States Occupation professor, scientist | Name Melville Hatch | |
Born November 25, 1898 Detroit, Michigan, United States Education B.A., University of Michigan
M.A., University of Michigan
Ph.D., University of Michigan Employer University of Washington Known for Beetles of the Pacific Northwest (1971)
the "Melville Hatch Beetle Collection" at Oregon State University Died January 19, 1988, Seattle, Washington, United States | ||
Melville Harrison Hatch (1898–1988) was an American entomologist who specialized in the study of beetles. His long career at the University of Washington was highlighted by the publication of the seminal, five-volume work Beetles of the Pacific Northwest. Hatch is responsible for the identification and naming of 13 species.
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Early life and education
Melville Hatch was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended Detroit Central High School. He began collecting insects at age 15 and went on to study biology at the University of Michigan, from where he graduated in 1919, afterwards going on to earn a Ph.D. in 1928.
Career
Brief teaching stints at Millikin University and the University of Minnesota were followed by an appointment as assistant professor at the University of Washington, where Hatch would spend the rest of his career. He was subsequently chosen to chair the zoology department, following the retirement of Trevor Kincaid and, in 1962, was appointed curator of entomology at the university's Burke Museum of Natural History. Over an eight-year period, beginning in 1959, Hatch served as editor of The Biologist, a magazine then published by Phi Sigma.
In 1937 Hatch founded The Scarabs, a Seattle social club focused on discussion of insects, and was elected "High Scarab," a post he would hold until the early 1970s. (Members of The Scarabs have included Robert Michael Pyle and the noted Polish anthropologist Borys Malkin.) In 1950 he authored a survey of scientific studies based on Trevor Kincaid's research, Studies Honoring Trevor Kincaid.
In 1949 Hatch served on the University of Washington's Committee on Tenure and Academic Freedom, which considered the case of several faculty members who had been charged with "subversive communist activity." He was part of the majority that endorsed the dismissal of three. The committee, while making strong denunciations of communism, found no good cause to dismiss three other admitted communist faculty members and recommended their retention. Rod Crawford, the curator of arachnids at the Burke Museum, would later note that Hatch's "essays show clearly enough that he had as little sympathy with Communist ideology as any Cold War American."
Hatch's five-volume magnum opus, Beetles of the Pacific Northwest, was published in 1971. The mammoth work, considered a seminal guide to beetles in the Pacific Northwest, took Hatch 23 years to finish. In the late 1970s, Hatch's collection of more than half-a-million beetles was transferred to Oregon State University where it was designated the "Melville Hatch Beetle Collection." Hatch was the recipient of the C. W. Woodworth Award in 1975.
Death
Melville Hatch died in Seattle, Washington in 1988.