Frank Milburn Howlett

Francis "Frank" Milburn Howlett (5 January 1877 – 20 August 1920) was a British entomologist who served in India in the position of a Second Imperial Entomologist, a position which was later changed to the Imperial Pathological Entomologist in India. He specialized in insects (mainly Diptera - sandflies) and parasitic ticks of medical and veterinary importance. A major discovery by him was the attractant methyl eugenol and its effect on flies of the genus Bactrocera. Life and work Howlett was born in Wymondham, Norfolk, the son of Francis John Howlett, a solicitor, and Mary Jane née Milburn. He was educated at Wymondham Grammar School and Bury St Edmunds Grammar School, and then at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was an assistant master at Edinburgh Academy from 1900 to 1903 and at Holt Grammar School before being posted as a professor of natural science (which included the teaching of chemistry) at Muir Central College, Allahabad, from 1905 to 1908, initially in a temporary position (to replace E.G. Hill who was on furlough) which was then extended. He joined the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in December 1907 as Second (i.e. deputy) Imperial Entomologist under Harold Maxwell-Lefroy and from 1912 as Imperial Pathological Entomologist for the Government of India. In 1910 he was in England and Harold Maxwell-Lefroy deputed him to attend the first International Entomological Congress in Brussels, where he presented on the state of economic entomology in India and also on issues in preserving specimens in India. He left India during the First World War and worked with the Royal Army Medical College, while also attending various meetings of learned societies, and returned to India only in 1917. In 1919 he presided over the zoological section of the 6th Indian Science Congress at Bombay, giving a talk on "tactics against insects." One of his most important findings was in noting the attraction of tephritid flies to methyl eugenol, a component that he identified from several others present in citronella oil. He also noted how fleas disliked wet grass and noted a decline in plague during the onset of the rains and suggested that this might be a reason for the plague being rare in Bengal. He published a technique to trap thrips with attractant mixtures of Benzaldehyde, Cinnamaldehyde and Anisaldehyde.