John Lawrence LeConte

File:Portrait-dr-john-lawrence-leconte-1825-1883.webp

A member of the scientifically inclined LeConte family, John Lawrence was born in New York City, the son of naturalist John Eatton Le Conte. His mother, Mary A. H. Lawrence, died when John Lawrence was only a few months old, and he was raised by his father. Most reliable sources spell his name "LeConte" or "Leconte", without the space used by his father, and samples of his signature show the preference for "LeConte".

He graduated from Mount Saint Mary College, Emmittsburg, Maryland, in 1842, and from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, in 1846. He worked as a chemical assistant to John Torrey and after receiving his medical degree he briefly practiced medicine. He also married Helen Grier and in the same year he gave up medical practice. During the civil war he again worked as a medical inspector and received the rank of lieutenant colonel. Having inherited enough money to make himself independent, LeConte did not practice medicine professionally. Influences in his life included Louis Agassiz and Hermann Rudolph Schaum who stayed in the Leconte home.{{Cite journal |date=1947 |title=John Lawrence LeConte |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3998838 |journal=The Coleopterists Bulletin |volume=1 |issue=4/5 |pages=46–48 |issn=0010-065X|jstor=3998838}}

While still in medical college, in 1844, John Lawrence traveled with his cousin Joseph LeConte to the Great Lakes. Starting at Niagara Falls, they visited Detroit and Chicago and traversed Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois before returning up the Ohio River to Pittsburgh and on to New York.{{cite journal|url=http://collections.mnhs.org/mnhistorymagazine/articles/32/v32i02p081-099.pdf|editor=June Drenning Holmquist|year=1951|title=Frontier Vacation: Joseph Le Conte's Early Geological Excursion|journal=Minnesota History|volume=32|issue=2|pages=81–99|jstor=20175596}} John Lawrence published his first three papers on beetles that year.

After graduating from medical college John Lawrence LeConte made several trips west, including to California via Panama in 1849. While in San Francisco, he sent 10,000 beetles preserved in ethanol back to his father. Another 20,000 beetle specimens were lost in a fire in 1852. LeConte also traveled to Europe, Egypt and Algiers.{{cite journal|last=Scudder|first=Samuel H.|title=A Biographical Sketch of Dr. John Lawrence LeConte|date=1884|journal=Transactions of the American Entomological Society|volume=11|issue=3–4|pages=i–xxviii|jstor=25076441|jstor-access=free}} He spent two years exploring the Colorado River, and was in Honduras for the building of the Honduras Interoceanic Railway, and in Colorado and New Mexico with the party surveying for the Kansas Pacific Railroad.{{cite book|title=American Scientific Exploration: 1803-1860|series=American Philosophical Society Library Publication|publisher=American Philosophical Society|year=1991|isbn=0871690152}} He moved to Philadelphia in 1852, residing there for the rest of his life. He died in Philadelphia on November 15, 1883.{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/67048624/personal/ |title=Personal |newspaper=Delaware State Journal |page=4 |date=1883-11-22 |access-date=2021-01-06 |via=Newspapers.com}}

During the American Civil War he enlisted in the Army Medical Corps as a surgeon. He was promoted to the position of medical inspector and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel by the end of the war.{{sfn |Essig |1931 |page=681}}{{sfn |Mallis |1971 |page=246}}

In 1878 he became the chief clerk (assistant director) of the United States Mint in Philadelphia. He retained that position until his death in 1883.

LeConte was active in the scientific societies of his time, with stints as vice-president of the American Philosophical Society (1880–1883) and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1873). He was a founder of the American Entomological Society, and a charter member of the National Academy of Sciences.[http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/le-conte-john-l.pdf Incorporators of the NAS]

File:Gravemarker of Dr. John Lawrence LeConte.jpg, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania]]

The genera Lecontella, Lecontellus, Lecontia, and ContiaBeolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. {{ISBN|978-1-4214-0135-5}}. ("Le Conte", page 154). and several hundred species (mostly beetles) are named after him, including a bird, LeConte's thrasher (Toxostoma lecontei), which he discovered while on a beetle-collecting trip to Arizona, and was named after him by George Newbold Lawrence. LeConte communicated with and collected birds and other natural history specimens for Spencer Fullerton Baird, a distant cousin and assistant director and then director of the Smithsonian Institution for a total of 39 years. In turn Baird asked other naturalists to collect beetles for LeConte.

In the 1850s, LeConte collected some crystals from a cave in Honduras being mined for bat guano. It was later found to be a new mineral that was named "lecontite" in his honor.{{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=W. J. |title=Lecontite, a new mineral |journal=American Journal of Science and Arts |date=1858 |volume=76 |pages=273–274 |url=https://rruff.info/rruff_1.0/uploads/American_journal_of_science_76_1858_273.pdf |access-date=2 May 2021}}

{{Wikisource author}}

• {{cite book

| last1 = Melsheimer |first1 = F.E. | author1-link = Frederick Ernst Melsheimer

| last2 = Haldeman (rev.) | first2 = S.S. | author2-link = Samuel Stehman Haldeman

| last3 = LeConte (rev.) | first3 = J.L. | author3-link = John Lawrence LeConte

| date = 1853

| title = Catalogue of the Described Coleoptera of the United States

| location = Washington

| publisher = Smithsonian Institution

| url = http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/1562

}}

• Catalogue of the Coleoptera of the United States. (1853) Frederick Ernst Melsheimer, revised by Samuel Stehman Haldeman and John Lawrence LeConte
• Classification of the Coleoptera of North America (1861, 1873)
• New Species of North American Coleoptera (1866, 1873)
• {{cite journal

| last1 = LeConte | first1 = John | author1-link = John Lawrence LeConte

| last2= Horn | first2= George H. | author2-link = George Henry Horn

| date = December 1876

| title = The Rhynchoptera of America, North of Mexico

| journal = Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

| volume = 15

| issue = 96

| pages = iii–xvi, 1–455

| url = https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/86415#page/9/mode/1up

}}

• Classification of the Coleoptera of North America. Part II (1883) - with George Henry Horn

• See :Category:Taxa named by John Lawrence LeConte

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite journal|author=Dow, R. P.|title=The Greatest Coleopterist|journal=Journal of the New York Entomological Society|year=1914|volume=22|issue=3|pages=185–191|jstor=25003617}}
• {{cite book|last=Essig | first = E. O.|title=A History of Entomology|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.7958|year=1931|publisher=MacMillan Company|pages=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.7958/page/n690 680]–685}}
• {{cite journal|author=Horn, George H.|title=John Lawrence LeConte|journal=Science|year=1883|volume=2|issue=46|pages=783–786|doi=10.1126/science.ns-2.46.783|pmid=17739760|bibcode=1883Sci.....2..783H|url=https://zenodo.org/record/2411476}}
• {{cite book|last = Mallis | first = Arnold|title=American Entomologists|url=https://archive.org/details/americanentomolo0000mall|url-access=registration|year=1971|publisher=Rutgers University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/americanentomolo0000mall/page/242 242–248]|isbn=9780813506869 }}
• {{cite journal|author=Riley, Charles Valentine|title=Tribute to the Memory of John Lawrence LeConte|journal=Psyche: A Journal of Entomology|year=1883|volume=4|issue=115–116|pages=107–110|doi=10.1155/1883/37519|doi-access=free}}
• {{cite journal|author=Scudder, Samuel H.|title=Memoir of John Lawrence LeConte 1825-1883|journal=Biographical Memoirs|year=1886|publisher=National Academy of Sciences|pages=261–293}}
• {{cite book|author=Sorensen, W. Conner|title=Brethren of the Net, American Entomology, 1840-1880|year=1995|publisher=University of Alabama Press}}
• "John Lawrence LeConte" (1936). Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons.
• {{cite web|title=John L. (John Lawrence) LeConte papers, 1812-1897|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.B.L493-ead.xml#top|website=American Philosophical Society Library}}

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• Samuel Henshaw (1878) [https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/41125#0 The entomological writings of John L. Leconte].:Dimmock's special bibliography. no. 1 Cambridge, Massachusetts, The editor (George Dimmock), 1878.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Le Conte, John Lawrence}}

Category:1825 births

Category:1883 deaths

Category:American entomologists

Category:Coleopterists

Category:Union army surgeons

Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences

Category:Scientists from New York City

Category:19th-century American people

Category:Mount St. Mary's University alumni

Category:Burials at West Laurel Hill Cemetery

Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society