Legendary entomologist Richard M. Bohart, 93, world-renowned for his expertise on wasps and mosquitoes during a 32-year career at the University of California, Davis, died Feb. 1 in a Berkeley hospital after a long illness.
Funeral services are pending.

During his career, Dr. Bohart identified more than one million mosquitoes and wasps, many displayed at R. M. Bohart Museum of Entomology, a teaching, research and public service facility that he founded on campus in 1946. He authored 230 separate publications, and wrote six books on mosquitoes and wasps.

Dr. Bohart spent his sabbaticals on entomological expeditions, visiting museums and collecting insects. In 1960 alone, he visited 21 museums in Europe and eastern United States. His other expeditions took him to South Africa, South America and Australia.

"Dr. Bohart, or 'Doc' as all of his students knew him, is the reason most of us became entomologists," said UC Davis entomology professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum. "As graduate students we were all terrified of him and thought he ate undergraduates for breakfast. But he was generous, enthusiastic and provided us with all the support he could, even with funds out of his own pocket. I owe my career in entomology to him and my love of wasps."

Born Sept. 28, 1913, in Palo Alto, he began collecting butterflies at age 7. He went on to study at UC Berkeley, receiving three degrees in entomology including his doctorate in 1938. He and his brother George played on the UC Berkeley football team.

Dr. Bohart taught at UCLA from 1938 to 1941, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps in 1941, serving as lieutenant commander of the Pacific Area and Washington. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 1946, chaired the Department of Entomology from 1956 to 1965 and retired in 1980 as an emeritus professor. Bohart taught not only entomology, medical entomology and general entomology, but also systematics and agricultural economics.

"All of his students went on to be quite successful," Kimsey said. "They dominated the field for a generation."

They include a former chief and research leader of the Systematic Entomology Laboratory, U. S. Department of Food and Agriculture, Washington D. C. as well as four research entomologists with the same laboratory; the former chief of USDA's Bee Biology and Systematic Laboratory, Logan, Utah; the former supervisory research entomologist of the Division of Vector-borne Viral Diseases, Ft. Collins, Colo.; a former dean of the college of agriculture, Universidad de Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela; a former chair of the UC Riverside Department of Entomology; professors in various universities throughout the country; and entomologists in state agricultural departments.

Dr. Bohart's former students, Arnold Menke of the Ammophila Research Institute, Bisbee, Ariz., and Eric Grissell of the Systematic Entomology Lab, with the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture in Washington, D.C., said he "contributed substantially to the world literature of the order, including two landmark books, Sphecid Wasps of the World (with A. S. Menke) and The Chrysidid Wasps of the World (with L.S. Kimsey)."

"Dr. Bohart developed one of the finest collections of western Nearctic Hymenopteria in the world," they wrote in a letter of support. "A great deal of this material was obtained through his own energetic collecting and his support of collecting by his students."

Dr. Bohart lived in Davis for more than three decades with his wife, Margaret, who died in January 1994. They had no children. Several years ago he moved to Hercules, Contra Costa County, with his second wife, Elizabeth Arias.

Dr. Bohart mostly recently returned to the UC Davis campus on May 15, 2006 when he received the International Society of Hymenopterists Distinguished Research Medal, one of three ever awarded. Hymenopteria is an order of insects that includes bees, wasps and ants.

The reception drew more than 50 former students and colleagues from throughout the United States, including Washington D.C., Kansas, Arizona, Oregon and California.
Scores of former students praised him at the reception. Retired entomologist Paul Marsh, of North Newton, Kan., who studied under Bohart beginning in 1957, said he was "extremely grateful for his influence on my career and his training and encouragement during my student days at Davis."

Marsh said Bohart's first love was wasps, and his second love was students. "He was always there when we needed advice or direction and always had words of encouragement when needed. No other professor in my college days had this combination of love for insects and for the students as did Dick."

James M. Carpenter, curator of hymenoptera at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, described Bohart as a "giant among hymenopterists."

"His combination of publications (both quantity and quality), collection building, and student training (many of whom are distinguished scholars; leading scientists in their own right) is unsurpassed among the world's leading hymenopterists of the last century," Carpenter wrote in a nomination letter.

"Doc cast an imposing figure on campus," recalled Kimsey.

Ironically. Dr. Bohart died on her birthday, Feb. 1.