Brian Hocking

Brian Hocking (22 September 1914 – 23 May 1974) was a Canadian entomologist known for his work in medical entomology on blood-sucking flies, particularly black-flies and mosquitoes. He was also a specialist on insect host detection and flight.

Hocking was born in London, and after a B.Sc. from the Imperial College, he worked for some time as an entomologist in the British Indian Army posted in Lucknow during World War II.[1] He joined the University of Alberta in 1946, completing his masters and a Ph.D. (1953) from the Imperial College with a thesis on The intrinsic range and speed of the flight of insects before becoming a faculty member, a position he kept for the rest of his life. He was a keen educator, and made numerous TV and radio programs, apart from helping develop the curriculum of Edmonton schools. He received a Gold Medal of the Entomological Society of Canada in 1973.[2][3] In a review he wrote that most of the literature on mosquitoes were on Aedes and Culex and that these were unrepresentative of the mosquitoes.[4] He also worked on flight and its efficiency in insects.[5] Hocking also made studies on insects and their associations with the African thorn acacias.[6][7] He founded a newsletter called Quaestiones Entomologicae. He worked on entomology even during his last days as a cancer patient.[3]