Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter
British entomologist (1882-1953)
G.D. Hale Carpenter MBE (26 October 1882 in Eton, Berkshire – 30 January 1953 in Oxford) was a British entomologist and medical doctor. He worked first at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and in Uganda, on tse-tse flies and sleeping sickness. His main work in zoology was on mimicry in butterflies, an interest he developed in Uganda and Tanganyika.
He succeeded E.B. Poulton as Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford University from 1933 to 1948.
Biography
Douglas was a son of Philip Herbert Carpenter DSc FRS, a schoolmaster at Eton College; a grandson of the naturalist and physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter; and a great-grandson of Lant Carpenter, a Unitarian minister.
Carpenter attended St Catherine's College, Oxford, graduating in 1904. He studied medicine at St George's Hospital, London, graduating as a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (the standard combined medical degree at the University of London at that time) in 1908. He then joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and became a Doctor of Medicine in 1913 with a dissertation on the tsetse fly (Glossina palpalis) and sleeping sickness.
In 1919 he married Amy Frances Thomas-Peter from Cornwall. The marriage had no issue.
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