DEPARTMENT NEWS

2007 Osmun Award Winner

Thomas J. Henry

Dr. Thomas J. Henry (BS ’71) is the 2007 winner of the John V. Osmun Alumni Professional Achievement Award in Entomology. In a long and distinguished career, Tom essentially has done it all - and done it extraordinarily well. After graduating from Purdue, he worked for a local pest control company. He worked as a regulatory entomologist in state government for eight years before becoming a research entomologist with USDA-ARS.

At the Systematic Entomology Lab, he has become a world class taxonomic specialist on the order Heteroptera, or true bugs. Dr. Henry’s biological and taxonomic work on mirids commanded the attention of researchers in North America and beyond. His extensive field work in the United States and in numerous foreign countries has added tens of thousands of specimens to the National Collection. He was the driving force behind the first catalog of North American true bugs published since 1917. Published in 1988, the new catalog unquestionably stimulated interest in studying the Heteroptera. Dr. Henry also served as editor of the quarterly journal “Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington”, rendered service to the ESA and various other scientific societies, and has given his time freely to countless visitors to the Heteroptera Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. The award ceremony will be on Friday, October 26, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. in the Deans Auditorium of Pfendler Hall.