Karl-Johan Hedqvist, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
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Swedish entomologist (1917–2009)
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Västerbotten, Västerbotten County, Sweden
About Karl-Johan Hedqvist
- Karl-Johan Hedqvist (1917–2009) was a Swedish entomologist who focused on wasps (Hymenoptera), especially chalcid wasps and other parasitoid wasps.
- He described 260 species and over 70 genera of wasps. Hedqvist was born on 18 July, 1917 in Bodarna of Västerbotten County in northern Sweden.
- In 1939, he took his first insect-related job as a field assistant looking at forest pest insects.
- Retaining a focus on forest entomology, he moved to Stockholm for further studies and an assistant position at the Swedish Forest Research Institute from 1949.
- In this capacity, he travelled extensively around Sweden, working on pest management.
- At the same time he was accumulated up a large personal insect collection and started publishing widely (from 1945) on faunistics and applied entomology, on a subjects across the major insect orders Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and Hemiptera.
- In 1951 he married and settled in Vallentuna, north of Stockholm.
- He and his wife eventually had two children.In the mid 1950s, Hedqvist embarked upon his career as a taxonomist, describing first a new bark beetle and then what would become a very large number of Hymenoptera species and genera.
- In 1959 he was employed as a research assistant position at the Swedish Museum of Natural History (NHRM, for Naturhistoriska riksmuseet), where he had the opportunity to focus more on taxonomy.
- Nevertheless he left the position in favour of employment as a field entomologist back at the Swedish Forest Research Institute in 1963.
- In 1971, he moved back to the NHRM, holding a newly established position as a taxonomist with special focus on parasitoid wasps, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
- Hedqvist received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in 1977 for his work on the taxonomy of parasitoids.
- During his time at NHRM he supervised two successful PhD students in the systematics of parasitoid wasps.
- Hedqvist stayed at the Stockholm museum until his retirement in 1984.
- After retirement, he kept up his taxonomic and faunistic work from home, as well as his active involvement in the Stockholm Entomological Society, including serving as president, but published only a few more taxonomic contributions.
- In 2003 he published a checklist of chalcid wasps of Sweden, based primarily on his own collection, that is known as likely the most comprehensive database of Swedish chalcids.
- He died on 27 December 2009.
- In 2011 his collection of more than 50,000 Hymenoptera from around the world was purchased from his relatives by the Natural History Museum, London.
- At least six species of wasps have been named for Hedqvist.
Read more at Wikipedia