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General George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie was born on October 23, 1770, in Dalhousie Castle, Midlothian, Scotland.
He was a Scottish soldier and colonial administrator. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh. Following his father’s death in 1787, he decided to pursue a military career and in 1788, he purchased a cornetcy in the 3rd Dragoons. He was promoted to captain, later major of the 2nd Foot and lieutenant-colonel. He led its 2nd battalion in the West Indies in 1795 and was wounded during an unsuccessful attack against a French party on Martinique. He was stationed in Ireland during the rebellion of 1798 and he commanded assaults on the forts at Abukir and Rosetta (Rashīd), Egypt, in 1801. Promoted to major-general in 1808, he participated in expeditions to Netherlands, Spain, and France. He received several honours for his services, a Knight Companion (KB) in 1813, and a Knight Grand Cross (GCB) in 1815 when he was also created Baron Dalhousie in the peerage of the UK. In 1830, he was promoted to general. After the war, he embarked on a career as a colonial administrator. From 1816 to 1820 he was Governor of Nova Scotia, where he created Dalhousie College, Nova Scotia's first college, which grew into Dalhousie University. He was also Governor-General of British North America from 1820 to 1828 and later Commander-in-Chief in India.
In 1805, he married Christian Broun. He died on March 21, 1838, in Dalhousie Castle, Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, Scotland.
Maurice Dalibert was a French magistrate and amateur entomologist based in Caen who devoted much of his later life to the study of the region’s insect fauna. Before turning his attention to entomology, he pursued a distinguished legal career. In 1917, he received a doctorate from the Université de Caen for his influential dissertation, Le droit normand actuel, which examined the continuing relevance of traditional Norman private law. He subsequently practised as an attorney before the Court of Appeal in Caen and later served as a juge de paix (justice of the peace).
During the early 1920s, Dalibert increasingly focused on natural history and became an important figure in Norman entomology. He was instrumental in founding the Société normande d’Entomologie and developed a particular interest in Lepidoptera, the order that includes butterflies and moths. Among his contributions was the paper Première note sur les collections de Normandie formées par des entomologistes décédés, which sought to document, trace, and safeguard insect collections assembled by deceased entomologists from Normandy.
William Healey Dall was born on August 21, 1845, in Boston, Massachusetts.
He was an American naturalist, a prominent malacologist, and one of the earliest scientific explorers of interior Alaska. After graduating from high school in 1863, he took a keen interest in mollusks and became a pupil of Louis Agassiz of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, in natural science. He completed numerous expeditions to Siberia and Alaska. He described many mollusks of the Pacific Northwest of America and was for many years America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks. Dall also made substantial contributions to ornithology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, physical and cultural anthropology, oceanography, and paleontology. He also carried out meteorological observations in Alaska for the Smithsonian Institution. He was a prolific author, having published over 1,600 papers, reviews, and commentaries. He holds the distinction of having described the second largest number of species of mollusks (nearly 4,000). He was elected member of most of the U.S. scientific societies, vice-president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1882, 1885), a founder of the National Geographic Society, and the Philosophical Society of Washington. In 1897, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was a Foreign Member of the Geological Society of London. Mount Dall, an 8,399-foot (2,560 m) peak in the Alaska Range, now in Denali National Park and Preserve was named after Dall by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1902.
In 1880, he married Annette Whitney (1859-1943). He died on March 27, 1927, in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Ernesto D. Dallas was a prominent Argentine physician and naturalist whose work helped lay the foundations of entomology in Argentina. He served as the inaugural president of the Sociedad Entomológica Argentina (Argentine Entomological Society), leading the organization from its establishment in 1925 until 1927. Beyond his scientific contributions, Dallas was dedicated to documenting the history of Argentine natural sciences and highlighting the achievements of earlier researchers. Through his writings and public lectures, he celebrated the work of influential figures such as Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg and Enrique Lynch Arribálzaga, helping to preserve their contributions for future generations through publication in some of the country’s earliest scientific journals.