Marston Bates was an influential and popular ecologist whose studies on mosquitoes greatly improved the understanding of yellow fever.
Marston Bates (July 23, 1906 – April 3, 1974) was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and attended the University of Florida and Harvard, where his Ph.D. thesis was The Butterflies of Cuba (1934). His studies on mosquitoes and yellow fever in Albania, Egypt and Colombia for the Rockefeller Foundation are still widely cited. From 1952 to 1971 he taught at the University of Michigan while also writing popular books such as The Forest and the Sea (1960) and Gluttons and Libertines (1971). The American Geographical Society bestowed Marston with a Charles P. Daly medal, citing his "gift of clear and literate exposition; his style displays a philosophic bent, an acuity of perception, and a spark of humor that together make for delightful reading."
Marston Bates appears in the following:
The Ecology of Health
Wednesday, December 07, 1955
