Stephen Alfred Forbes (1844 – 1930)
American entomologist and naturalist

Stephen Alfred Forbes, an entomologist and naturalist, was the son of Isaac Sawyer and Agnes (Van Hoesen) Forbes. Forbes was born at Silver Creek, Ill. His father was a farmer, and died when Stephen was 10 years old. An older brother, Henry, then 21 years old, had been independent since he was 14, working his way toward a college education, but on his father's death he abandoned his career, took the burden of his father's family on his shoulders, and supported and educated the children. He taught Stephen to read French, sent him to Beloit to prepare for college; and when the Civil War came he sold the farm and gave the proceeds (after the mortgage was paid) to his mother and sister for their support. Both brothers then joined the 7th Illinois Cavalry, Henry having retained enough money to buy horses for both. Stephen, enlisting at 17, was rapidly promoted, and at 20 became a captain in the regiment of which his brother ultimately became colonel. In 1862, while carrying dispatches, he was captured and held in a Confederate prison for four months. After liberation and three months in the hospital recuperating, he rejoined his regiment and served until the end of the war. He had learned to read Italian and Spanish in addition to French, before the war, and studied Greek while in prison.

He was a born naturalist. His farm life as a boy and his open-air life in the army intensified his interest in nature . After the close of the war, he began at once the study of medicine, entering the Rush Medical College where he nearly completed the course. His biographers have not as yet given the reason for the radical change in his plans which caused him to abandon medicine at this late stage in his education; but the writer has been told by his son, that it was "because of a series of incidents having to do mainly with operations without the use of anesthetics which convinced him that he was not temperamentally adapted to medical practice." His scientific interests, however, had been thoroughly aroused, and for several years while he taught school in southern Illinois, he carried on studies in natural history. In 1872 through the interest and influence of Dr. George Vasey, the well-known botanist, he was made curator of the Museum of State Natural History at Normal, Ill., and three years later was made instructor in zoology at the normal school. In 1877 the Illinois State Museum was established at Springfield; and the museum at Normal, becoming the property of the state, was made the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History. Forbes was made its director. During these years he had been publishing the results of his researches rather extensively, and had gone into a most interesting and important line of investigation, namely the food of birds and fishes. He studied intensively the food of the different species of fish inhabiting Illinois waters and the food of the different birds. This study, of course, kept him close to entomology, and in 1884 he was appointed professor of zoology and entomology in the University of Illinois. The State Laboratory of Natural History was transferred to the university and in 1917 was renamed the Illinois Natural History Survey. He retained his position as chief, and held it up to the time of his death. He was appointed state entomologist in 1882 and served until 1917, when the position was merged in the survey. He retired from his teaching position as an emeritus professor in 1921. He served as dean of the College of Science of the university from 1888 to 1905.

All through his career Forbes had been publishing his writings actively. As early as 1895, Samuel Henshaw, in his Bibliography of the more Important Contributions to American Economic Entomology, listed 101 titles. It is said that his bibliography runs to more than 500 titles. And the range of these titles is extraordinary; they include papers on entomology, ornithology, limnology , ichthyology, ecology , and other phases of biology. All of his work was characterized by remarkable originality and depth of thought. Forbes was the first writer and teacher in America to stress the study of ecology, and thus began a movement which has gained great headway. He published 18 annual entomological reports, all of which have been models. He was the first and leading worker in America on hydrobiology. He studied the fresh-water organisms of the inland waters and was the first scientist to write on the fauna of the Great Lakes . His work on the food of fishes was pioneer work and has been of very great practical value. Forbes was a charter member of the American Association of Economic Entomologists and served twice as its president. He was also a charter member of the Illinois Academy of Science; a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society; and in 1928 was made an honorary member of the Fourth International Congress of Entomology. Indiana University gave him the degree of Ph.D., in 1884, on examination and presentation of a thesis. He married, on December 25, 1873, Clara Shaw Gaston, whose death preceded his by only six months. A son, Dr. Ernest B. Forbes of State College, Pa., and three daughters survived him.

[Leland Ossian Howard ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Croker, Robert A. Stephen Forbes and the Rise of American Ecology. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001.

PERIODICALS

Dictionary of American Biography. Base set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group. 2002.

Schneider, Daniel W. "Local Knowledge, Environmental Politics, and the Founding of Ecology in the United States: Stephen Forbes and 'The Lake as a Microcosm' 1887." Isis 91, no. 4 (December 2000): 681–705.