KENNEDY, Professor John Stodart (1912-1993)

Papers of Professor John Stodart Kennedy, 1915-1993, comprising biographical and autobiographical papers, 1915-1992, including Kennedy's autobiographical notes, family and personal papers, diaries; papers relating to research, 1939-1992, documenting most stages of his scientific career from the 1930s, including wartime service; his periods at Cambridge, Imperial College and Oxford, categorised alphabetically by topic including aphids, behaviour/behaviourism, ethology, locusts, mosquitoes and motivation; photographs and observations in Albania, 1939; drafts and exchanges of ideas for his book of 1992; papers and correspondence relating to Imperial College, 1963-1987; papers relating to lectures, papers and broadcasts, 1935-1987; publications, 1939-1992; societies and organisations, 1937-1991, including the Anti-Locust Research Centre; scientific and general correspondence, 1937-1992, with friends and colleagues such as Donald Livingston Gunn, Vincent Brian Wigglesworth, many overseas correspondents including scientific exchanges; papers relating to references and recommendations, 1954-1991, including correspondence with editors, authors and publishing houses; photographs, 1942-1985, notably of the work of the Middle East Anti-Locust Unit, 1942-1944, wind-tunnels, group photographs of meetings and symposia.

Born Titusville, Pennsylvania, 1912; educated Westminster School, 1925-1928; read Zoology at University College London, 1929-1933; MSc, University College London; PhD on locusts, including fieldwork in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, awarded 1939; Rockefeller Foundation Malaria Research Laboratory at Tirana, Albania, 1939; Research Officer in the Colonial Office's Middle East Anti-Locust Unit, 1942-1944, organising both Soviet and RAF crop-dusting aircraft; joined Vincent Brian Wigglesworth's Insect Physiology Unit at the Department of Zoology, Cambridge, 1946-1967; elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1965; Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, Agricultural Research Council and Professor of Animal Behaviour, University of London at Silwood Park, 1967-1983; moved to the Department of Zoology, Oxford, 1983; research interests were aphids, moths and pheromones, insect flight patterns and from the later 1980s 'anthropomorphic misinterpretation of insect behaviour in various contexts'; Gold Medal (Zoology) of the Linnean Society, 1984; Wigglesworth Medal of the Royal Entomological Society, 1985; died, 1993.

Publications: A Conspectus of Aphids as Vectors of Plant Viruses with M F Day and Victor Frank Eastop (Commonwealth Institute of Entomology, London, 1962); Insect Polymorphism Editor (Royal Entomological Society, London, 1961); The new anthropomorphism (1992).

Researchers wishing to consult the Archives should first contact the College Archivist, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, for an appointment.

Transferred from the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists, University of Bath, to the College Archives.

A catalogue is available in the reading room of the College Archives (NCUACS catalogue no 49/5/94).

A photocopying service is available at the discretion of the Archivist. Photocopies are supplied for research use only. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Archivist.

The papers were received by the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists, University of Bath, from the Department of Zoology, Oxford and from Kennedy's home in Oxford.

Records of Silwood Park Field Research Station (KZF), held at Imperial College.

See J Brady, John Stodart Kennedy, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 41 (1995), 243-260