Theodore D. A. Cockerell

File:Wilmatte Porter Cockerell (1871-1957) and Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell (1866-1948) (cropped).jpg

Cockerell was born in Norwood, Greater London, the eldest son of Sydney John Cockerell (1842–1877) and Alice Elizabeth (née Bennett). Sydney Cockerell, who became director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, was a younger brother, Douglas Cockerell was another of his brothers and Olive Juliet was one of his sisters.{{cite book | editor-first = Viola | editor-last =Meynell | title= Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell | publisher= Jonathan Cape |date = 1940|page=35| url= https://archive.org/details/friendsoflifetim0000cock | access-date= 16 April 2025}}. {{cite ODNB | title = Cockerell, Sir Sydney Carlyle (1867–1962)| url = https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-32475 | access-date = 15 April 2025 | first = Alan | last = Bell | date = September 2004 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/32475}}{{cite journal | url = https://www.nature.com/articles/161229a0 | journal = Nature | title = Obituary: Prof. Theodore D. A. Cockerell | date = 14 February 1948 | first = Robert B. | last = Benson | volume = 161 | pages = 229–230 | doi = 10.1038/161229a0 | access-date = 15 April 2025 }}

He married Annie Sarah Fenn in 1891 (she died in 1893) and Wilmatte Porter in 1900. In 1901, he named the ultramarine blue chromodorid Mexichromis porterae (now Felimare porterae) in her honor. After their marriage in 1900, they frequently went on collecting expeditions together and assembled a large private library of natural history films, which they showed to schoolchildren and public audiences to promote the cause of environmental conservation.

He died in 1948 in San Diego, California, aged 81, and was buried in Columbia Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XsdfgCXCUyUC&pg=PR16 |title=The Valley of the Second Sons |year=2004 |publisher=Pilgrims Process |isbn=9780971060999 |editor=William A Weber }}

Between 1891 and 1901, Cockerell was the curator of the public museum of Kingston, Jamaica, professor of entomology of the New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1900–03, he was an instructor in biology at the New Mexico Normal School. While there, he taught and mentored Charlotte Cortlandt Ellis.{{cite news|url=http://aces.nmsu.edu/academics/rangescienceherbarium/documents/42pdf.pdf|title=Charlotte Ellis of the Sandia Mountains|author=Eugene Jercinovic|work=The New Mexico Botanist|date=21 February 2008}}

In 1904, Cockerell became the curator of the Colorado College Museum and a lecturer on entomology. In 1906 he became a professor of systematic zoology at the University of Colorado where he worked with Junius Henderson in establishing the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. During World War II, he operated the Desert Museum in Palm Springs, California.{{cite book|last=Young|first=Patricia Mastick|title=Desert Dream Fulfilled: The History of the Palm Springs Desert Museum|year=1983|publisher=Palm Springs Desert Museum, Inc.|location=Palm Springs, California|pages=24–25|oclc=19266381|lccn=83080384}} {{LCC|QH541.5.D4 Y68 1983}}
- {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/newinternationa30unkngoog/page/n608/mode/1up |page=534|title=The New International Encyclopaedia |volume=V| year=1914 | edition=2|place=New York| publisher=Dodd, Mead and Company}}

In 1912, Cockerell first described the Megachile zexmeniae, a species of leafcutter bee.{{cite web |year=2014 |title=Megachile |url=https://www.biolib.cz/en/formsearch/?action=execute&searcharea=1&string=Megachile |accessdate=19 October 2014 |work=BioLib}}

Cockerell was author of more than 2,200 articles in scientific publications, especially on the Hymenoptera, Hemiptera and Mollusca, and on paleontology and various phases of evolution, plus some 1,700 other works, including treatises on social reform and education. He was one of the most prolific taxonomists in history, publishing descriptions of over 9,000 species and genera of insects alone, some 6,400 of which were bees and some 1,000 mollusks, arachnids, fungi, mammals, fish and plants.{{sfn |Zuparko| 2017}}

This includes descriptions of numerous fossil taxa, such as the landmark study, Some Fossil Insects from Florissant, Colorado (1913). {{botanist|Cockerell|inline=yes}} In an obituary note that appeared in the Nature on 14 February 1948, R.B. Benson observed that Cockerell "acquired the habit of hurrying his ideas and observations into print as soon as he could. The habit persisted throughout his long life, so that almost all his work appeared in the form of short papers".{{Cite book |last=New York Entomological Society |url=http://archive.org/details/journalof565719481949newy |title=Journal of the New York Entomological Society |date=1893 |publisher=Lawrence, Kan., Allen Press [etc.] |others=Smithsonian Libraries |page=191}}

Cockerell and Wilmatte traveled to the United Kingdom in 1921. While there, they visited the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where, according to himself in 1937, Isaac Bayley Balfour proved that the plant Primula ellisiae was a distinct species from P. rusbyi. He had named this taxon in honor of its discoverer, one of his students, Charlotte Cortlandt Ellis.{{cite journal|last=Cockerell|first=T D A |title=Recollections of a Naturalist IV, The Amateur Botanist |journal=BIOS|date=March 1937 |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=12–18}}{{cite journal |last1=Pollard |first1=Charles Louis |last2=Cockerell |first2=Theodore Dru Alison |date=6 August 1902 |title=Four new plants from New Mexico |url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2365072 |journal=Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington |volume=15 |pages=177–179 |access-date=20 August 2020}} However, at present this taxon is regarded as a synonym of P. rusbyi.{{cite web|title=Primula ellisiae|url=http://eol.org/pages/584029/overview |website=Encyclopedia of Life |access-date=22 March 2015}}

Cockerell was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1928.{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Theodore+D.+A.+Cockerell&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2023-07-26 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}} A dormitory in the Engineering Quad at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the moth Givira theodori are named in his honor.

Taxa named by Cockerell include:

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book|last1=Mallis|first1=Arnold|title=American Entomologists|date=1971|publisher=Rutgers University Press|pages=357–362}}
• {{Cite web |last=Zuparko |first=Robert |date=2017 |title=The Published Names of T.D.A. Cockerell |url=https://essig.berkeley.edu/publications/cockerell/ |website=Essig Museum of Entomology |publisher=University of California, Berkeley}}

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{{Commons category}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20091208142139/http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/ScaleWorld/About/Cockerell.htm Biography]
• [https://archive.today/20130415042623/http://gap.entclub.org/taxonomists/Cockerell/index.html GAP Biography]
• {{Gutenberg author | id=37095| name=T. D. A. Cockerell}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell |sopt=t}}
• {{Internet Archive author |name=T. D. A. Cockerell}}
• {{BHL author}}

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Category:1866 births

Category:1948 deaths

Category:19th-century Jamaican people

Category:American curators

Category:American entomologists

Category:American science writers

Category:American zoologists

Category:English emigrants to the United States

Category:Hymenopterists

Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society

Category:New Mexico Highlands University faculty

Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States

Category:University of Colorado Boulder faculty