13 Facts About Vincent Dethier

Vincent Gaston Dethier was an American physiologist and entomologist.

Vincent Dethier was born on February 20,1915, in Boston, Massachusetts, one of the four children of Jean Vincent and Marguerite Dethier.

Vincent Dethier's Belgian-born father was a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Liege who emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s.

Vincent Dethier was organist of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston and later became Director of Music for the Norwood, Massachusetts, public school system, and the organist and choirmaster of St Catherine's Church in Norwood.

Vincent Dethier received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and went on to obtain his PhD there in 1939.

Vincent Dethier became the first to prove that food is selected by caterpillars not for a plant's nutritional value but for its taste and smell.

Vincent Dethier wrote his first book, Chemical Insect Attractants and Repellents, in the bomb bay of a B-25 on what he called a "liberated" Italian typewriter.

Vincent Dethier then worked in the Army Chemical Corps as a research physiologist until 1946.

Vincent Dethier was a professor of zoology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1967 and then went to Princeton University, where for the next nine years he held the Class of 1877 Chair as Professor of Biology.

Vincent Dethier was an active scientist and teacher until his death at the age of 78.

Vincent Dethier died later that day at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, survived by his wife Lois Dethier and their two sons, Jehan Vincent Dethier and Paul Georges Dethier.

Vincent Dethier was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and the recipient of the Entomological Society of America's 1967 Founders' Memorial Award.

Vincent Dethier wrote more than 170 scholarly papers and authored or co-authored several academic books.