Dr. D.D. (Dick) Hardee

Abstract

Dr. D.D. (Dick) Hardee, a well-known cotton entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (retired) and recognized nationally and internationally as one of the world's leading authorities on boll weevils, passed away 19 November 2015. He was 77 years old. Dick was born 21 July 1938 in Snyder, Texas, the seventh child of Richard Arthur and Isla Ruth Autry Hardee. He graduated from Snyder High School in 1956 and received a B.S. degree with Honors in Agronomy from Texas Tech University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Entomology from Cornell University in 1962 and 1964, respectively. ![Graphic][1] In June 1964, Dick began his 40-year career as an entomologist when he accepted a position as Research Entomologist with USDA-ARS at the Boll Weevil Research Laboratory at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi. For the next ten years, Dick was involved in pheromone and trap research on boll weevil in support of the eradication program. For years, James (Jim) H. Tumlinson, at the time a USDA-ARS chemist and graduate student at Mississippi State University, would send Dick samples of possible attractants, which he would place in an olfactometer that Dick and technician Bruce Mitchell designed. As Dick often told his colleagues, “Jim Tumlinson started with 40 or 50 pounds of boll weevil frass (excrement)…he called one afternoon and … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif