| Authorised form of name | Perkins; Robert Cyril Layton (1866 - 1955); entomologist |
| Dates | 1866 - 1955 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Badminton, Gloucestershire, England |
| Date of birth | 15 November 1866 |
| Place of death | Hi home, Wotton, Newton Road, Bovey Tracey, England |
| Date of death | 29/09/1955 |
| Occupation | entomologist |
| Research field | Insect taxonomy |
| Natural history |
| Ornithology |
| Entomology |
| Activity | Education:
Merchant Taylors' School (1877–85); Jesus College, Oxford, MA; DSc (Oxon)
Career:
Private tutor at Dartmouth; selected by the Sandwich Islands committee (created by the British Association and the Royal Society) to go to the Hawaiian Islands as a collector, periodically retuning to England to work on the results (1891-1901); assisted Albert Koebele in the liberation of insect parasites which Koebele was sending to Honolulu for the control of pests (1895); worked for the board of agriculture of the Territory of Hawaii, organising inspection of imported plants to prevent introduction of pests (1902-1904); director of the new division of entomology at the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association's experimental station (1904); retired to England owing to ill health, settling in Devon, retained on the staff as a consulting entomologist (1912); resumed his study of the British Aculeata which resulted in several papers; assisted Reverend F. D. Morice in his contemplated revision of the British sawflies (1920); went blind in his last days (1955).
Memberships:
FZS; FES
Awards/Medals:
Linnean Medal 1912 |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 13/05/1920 |
| Age at election | 54 |
| Proposer | Thomas Algernon Chapman |
| Sidney Frederic Harmer |
| Henry Woodward |
| William Bateson |
| Frederick Augustus Dixey |
| Edward Bagnall Poulton |
| David Sharp |
| Relationships | Parents: Reverend Charles Mathew Perkins and Agnes Martha Beach, daughter of the Reverend Percy Thomas.
Spouse: 1) (1901) Zoë Lucy Sherrard Alatau (d. 1940), daughter of A. T. Atkinson, superintendent of public schools in the Hawaiian Islands, and granddaughter of Thomas Witlam Atkinson; 2) (1942) Clara M. J. Senior (née Dowse), she died in 1949.
Children: Four sons, one of whom died in infancy. His son John Frederick Perkins (1910-1983) was a hymnopterist. |
| General context | Noted for his work on Hymenoptera.
Particularly interested in Aculeata.
Studied the Stylops parasites of British bees.
Held an interest in ornithology, supplying information on Hawaiian birds, many of which are now extinct. |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
| Sources | Sources:
Bulloch's Roll; DNB
Obituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1956 vol 2 pp 215-236, plate, by Hugh Scott |
| Royal Society code | NA777 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| Reference number | Title | Date |
| EC/1920/12 | Perkins, Robert Cyril Layton: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |
| NLB/64/192 | Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Dr. [Robert Cyril Layton] Perkins, FRS | 22 February 1923 |
| NLB/57/881 | Copy letter from unknown correspondent; to unknown correspondent | 26 February 1920 |
| NLB/63/590 | Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to Dr. [Robert Cyril Layton] Perkins, FRS | 10 November 1922 |
| RR/28/17 | Referee's report by Robert Cyril Layton Perkins, on a paper 'Researches upon the Larch chermes (Cnaphalodes strobilobius, Kalt.), and their bearing upon the evolution of the Chermesinae in general' by Edward R Speyer | [March 1922] |
| MC/29/194 | Letter from [Robert Cyril Layton] Perkins, Park Hill House, Paignton, S. Devon, to the [Royal Society] | 31 December 1914 |
| MC/36 | Volume 36 of miscellaneous correspondence regarding business matters, sent to the Royal Society | 1922 |
| MC/37/106 | Letter from [Robert Cyril Layton] Perkins, 4 Thurlestone, Newton Abbot, Devon, to The [Secretary], Royal Society, London | 25 February 1923 |
| MC/36/78 | Letter from [Robert Cyril Layton] Perkins, 4 Thurlestone Road, Newton Abbot, to the Royal Society | 12 November 1922 |