Herbert Knutson
Copied with permission from the JOURNAL OF THE KANSAS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY, V. 42 (1) 1969 PP. 2-4)
Dr. Reginald H. Painter ... was born at Brownwood, Texas, September 12, 1901, and did his undergrduate work at Howard Payne College, Brownwood, and the University of Texas where he recieved the B.A. and M.A. degress in 1922 and 1924. His Ph.D. was from Ohio State University in 1926, after which he joined the Kansas State Univeristy entomology faculty.
Dr. Painter long had been recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on insect resistance in crop plants, and his book, Insect Resistance in Crop Plants, is still the leading work on this subject. Originally published by the Macmillan Company, it was reprinted in November, 1968, by the University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans. In the early 1950's it was translated and published in Russia. He was the author of more than 125 scientific publications, one of the latest being a 26-page, color-illustrated Kansas Agricultural Station bulletin, "Crops That Resist Insects Provide a Way to Increase World Food Supply."
Dr. Painter was in charge of the entomological aspects of cooperative projects with plant breeders in the Department of Agronomy and the Entomology Research Division, ARS, U.S. Department of Agriculture. When begun in 1926, the resistance project was the first experiment station project in this field. Among insect-resistant varieties distributed or approved as a result of the studies in whcih Dr. Painter collaborated were Atlas Sorgo, resistant to chinch bug; Cody alfalfa, resistant to spotted alfalfa aphid, and Pawnee, Ponca, and Ottawa wheats, resistant to Hessian fly.
He presented the first evidence of the presence of biological strains in Hessian fly and the corn leaf aphid. As a result, their characteristics are probably better known than those of any other insect biotypes.
He was entomologist for the United Fruit Company, Medical Divison at Puerto Castilla, Honduras, in 1926; at the Guatemala Tropical Research Center in 1951 and 1952; consultant for the Third and Sixth Latin American Conferences of Geneticists, Phytopathologists, Entomologists, and Soil Scientists in Bogota, Colombia, in 1955 and in Lima, Peru in 1964, both sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation; and moderator for a symposium on major pests of rice in the Philippines in 1964.
He was one of six authors of Fundamentals of Biology, published by Blakiston and Company in 1951, in which men from various disciplines in biology worked to find a mutually agreeable and meaningful definitionof many much used words, such as "parasite".
Dr. Painter also studied Bombyliidae for many years. Muchof the later work was in collaboration with his wife, Elizabeth. They collected in Central America and extensively in the southwestern United States and Mexico. He described and named five new genera or subgenera and 96 new species or subspecies. During a Sabbbatical leave in 1960-61, he studied types of North and South American Bombyliidae still existing in European museums, redescribing many of them. Early in his career he described and named 10 new species of Apioceriae, which then consituted more than half of the known North American species and more than a third of the species in the world.
In addition to directing the research of graduate students, he taught courses in insect control by host plant resistnace; entomological and zoological literature, later using the Guide to the Literature of the Zoological Sciences, 7th Edition, of which Roger C. Smith is the senior author and Dr. Painter the junior author. Until 1966, he taught courses in taxonomy and systematics.
He was a member of the National Academy fo Sciences - National Research Council's Subcommittee on Insect Pests and a member of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Orgnaization's Panel on Integrated Insect Control. He was awarded the Gamma Sigma Delta International Award for Distinguished Service to Agriculture in 1959 and the chapter award in 1968. In 1961 he was awarded an honorary LL.D. degree by the University of Arkansas in recognitaion of his outstanding contributions to science and to teaching. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of Sigma Xi, American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Naturalists, Kansas Entomolgical Society, Kansas Academy of Science, Society of Systematic Zoology, and Member of the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th International Congresses of Entomology. ...
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