UCL FACULTY OF LIFE SCIENCES

I started my undergraduate career at UCL in 1963 as a biochemist, but switched to Zoology. The staff were varied and very stimulating: they included Richard Freeman, Mary Whitear, John Maynard Smith, Roderick Fisher, Keith Vickerman and Adam Curtis.

More by chance than design, after graduating I found myself back at the Entomology Department of The Natural History Museum in 1967 (I had previously worked there from 1961-1963). My new job took me right back to my first-ever love in life: butterflies. The Natural History Museum has the best collection of butterflies in the world, and amazing library resources to match. I was just told to do research that would tell us something about evolution!

This was exactly what I did, and, decades later, I am still there. Since 1997, until my retirement in 2005, I was Keeper (Head) of the Department of Entomology, consisting of over 60 staff, as many students, postdocs and associates, and nearly 30 million insects, mites and spiders. Managing the Department takes a lot of time, but by collaborating with great colleagues such as Phil Ackery, Chris Humphries and Paul Williams, I still manage to keep up with research on butterflies and biodiversity issues.

See also the website of the Entomology Department at The Natural History Museum.

Selected publications:

Vane-Wright, R.I. 1972. Pre-courtship activity and a new scent organ in butterflies. Nature 239: 338-340.

Ackery, P.R. & Vane-Wright, R.I. 1984. Milkweed butterflies: their cladistics and biology, BMNH/Cornell UP.

Vane-Wright, R.I. & Ackery, P.R. (eds) 1984. The Biology of Butterflies. Academic Press.

Humphries, C.J., Williams, P.H. & Vane-Wright, R.I. 1995. Measuring biodiversity value for conservation. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 26: 93-111.

Vane-Wright, R.I. (in press) 2003. Butterflies.NHM/Smithsonian.

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