Torben Bjørn Larsen

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Torben Bjørn Larsen (12 January 1944 – 21 May 2015) was a Danish economist and lepidopterist who studied butterflies particularly in Asia and Africa. He wrote books on the butterflies of west Africa, the Middle East and numerous papers, including descriptions of many new taxa. Based on his travels on work and studies of butterflies he also published a book on his adventures.

Life and work[edit]

Larsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark but his early days were spent in Greece where he became interested in butterflies. He grew up with his grandmother in Copenhagen briefly and then moved to live in India from 1951. His father worked for the UNICEF and he was sent in 1954 to a Danish mission school in Kotagiri in the Nilgiris in southern India. In 1958 he went to Denmark to continue studies and received a masters degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen in 1970. He married Kiki in 1971 (died 1989) and worked as a social demographer in the area of family planning with the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Beirut for a while during which time he published the Butterflies of Lebanon (1974).[1]

Lepidoptera[edit]

In 1958 Larsen tried to identify a Neptis species he had collected in the Nilgiris and was surprised when the insect curator (Sören Ludvig Paul Tuxen) at the Copenhagen museum could not help him identify it. It was then that he realized how little was known about the butterflies of the world and it was not until 1986 that he was able to identify that particular Neptis as Neptis nata. In 1975 he moved to London where he pursued his doctoral thesis on the butterflies of the Middle East. Shortly after receiving his doctorate in 1984 he moved to work for DANIDA in India with his (second) wife Nancy Fee who worked for the World Health Organization. He studied butterflies in the various places where they lived and worked including the Philippines, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. He collaborated on butterfly research with the Royal Africa Museum (MRAC), the African Butterfly Research Institute and other organizations. He was elected president of the Association for Tropical Lepidoptera in 1996. The genus Torbenia was named after him. He wrote several books on butterflies, and also a series of papers on anecdotes including those on the hazards of butterfly collecting.[2][1]

Writings[edit]

Apart from his articles to journals, Larsen wrote several books including:

  • Larsen, T.B. 1990. The butterflies of Egypt. Apollo Books, Svendborg, Denmark.
  • Larsen, T.B. (1991, 1996) The Butterflies of Kenya and their Natural History. Oxford University Press, Oxford
  • Larsen, T.B. 2004. Butterflies of Bangladesh – an annotated checklist. IUCN, Bangladesh.
  • Larsen, T.B. 2005. Butterflies of West Africa. 2 vols, Apollo Books, Svendborg, Denmark

He wrote a long-running series of anecdotes on his travels and butterfly collection trips in The Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation which was later compiled into the book Hazards of Butterfly Collecting (2004).

(written in Hanoi, iii.2005)

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Fee, Nancy; Collins, Steve C (2015). "Obituary – Torben Bjorn Larsen" (PDF). Metamorphosis. 26: vi–xlv.
  2. ^ Huertas, Blanca (2015). "Obituary. Torben Bjørn Larsen". The Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation. 127: 180–182.
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