When you work closely in particular collections, the people who are responsible for bringing them to your institution start to feel like old friends. His is a name that comes up over and over in our collection. He donated his aphid collection to the Frost Entomological Museum. President of the Eastern Branch of the Entomological Society of America in 1947 and heavily involved in Extension at Penn State for over 30 years, no one can deny that John O. Pepper has influenced this field. While it was a bit tough to find resources online that talked about his legacy, I did find the memorial in American Entomologist to be quite comprehensive, providing the information for this post (Wheeler, 1996).
Born on June 9, 1902, Pepper sought out entomological research in his home state of South Carolina. He attended Clemson College [University] and received his bachelors degree in entomology in 1923 after serving in the ROTC. Two years later he received his Master’s degree in entomology from The Ohio State University; his thesis focused on bagworm parasites. Pepper returned to Clemson to work as an extension entomologist from 1925 to 1927.
In 1928, he joined the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture as an advanced entomologist, researching Oriental fruit moth parasites in Chambersburg and then Harrisburg. Pepper became an associate professor of entomology extension at Penn State in 1934 and was appointed to professor a decade later.
His extension career at that time focused on fruit pests in south-central Pennsylvania, and he was involved in the writing of around 100 extension publications. This is no small feat for someone who also donated a large collection to the Frost! During two sabbaticals, he toured throughout North and Central America to visit other land-grant universities to get a full picture of the role of extension in the world, before retiring in 1964.
While Pepper was deeply involved with extension, he also managed to work on aphid taxonomy and the growing of his collection throughout the 1940s-1960s. In the 1950s, Pepper described six new species of aphids, wrote a review of Cinara, and coauthored papers on a variety of aphid research.
Along with his contemporaries, Dr. K.C. Kim and Dr. Stuart Frost, Pepper sought to develop a center for entomological history at Penn State, as Pennsylvania is the “birthplace of entomology in the American colonies” and there were so many Penn State faculty members researching entomological history (Rutschky III, 1979).
His legacy at the Frost Entomological Museum is roughly 20,000 slide-mounted specimens, spanning 800 species. We are grateful for his donation and numerous contributions to the field as well as his tenacity for working with insects. Hopefully I can add to this post in the future and find a photo of John O. Pepper. Stay tuned for more blogposts about other entomologists who have helped grow the Frost’s collection from the ground up.
Colin Favret says
Thanks for the nice exposé on Pepper! His and Tissot’s 1973 revision of the pine-feeding Cinara of the eastern U.S. is still used frequently. Although Pepper described six species as sole author (five of which is still valid), he described six others in collaboration with Tissot and Smith (another five of which are still valid).
ref: http://Aphid.SpeciesFile.org