Gahan, Arthur Burton

Arthur Gahan was born into a large farm family in Kansas on December 9, 1880. He attended Kansas State College, graduating in 1903. Then in 1904 he became assistant in the Department of Entomology of Maryland Agricultural College, and received an M.S. from that institu tion in 1906. He remained there as Assistant Entomologist, becoming interested in “parasitic” Hymenoptera in general and braconid parasitoids of aphids in particular. In 1913 he accepted a position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to work as a taxonomist at the U.S. National Museum. There, he worked on various groups of “parasitic” Hymenoptera, but ultimately concentrated on Chalcidoidea and became a leading authority of them and publishing copiously. He married in 1908, was active in civic affairs and the Entomological Society of Washington, becoming its president in 1922. He died on May 23, 1960, and was survived by his wife and two children.