Quick Facts
Biography
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Maitland Emmet MBE (15 July 1908 – 3 March 2001) was an amateur entomologist and a former schoolmaster who taught Latin, English and Ancient Greek. He was a former President of the British Entomological and Natural History Society, a former President of the Amateur Entomologists' Society, and a Vice-President of the Royal Entomological Society, having been elected a fellow of that Society in 1984. Among other positions held in relation to his entomological work are:
Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London
Member of Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica
During his life, Maitland Emmet became one of Britain's leading specialists in the microlepidoptera, as well as a classical scholar.
Early life
Born in the vicarage at West Hendred, Oxfordshire, the son of a clergyman, he went to Sherborne School and University College, Oxford. He was given a butterfly net for his thirteenth birthday and searching his school grounds for butterflies caught a comma (1921), the first Dorset record since the 19th century. While studying greats at Oxford he was interested in rowing, learnt to fly and bought a government surplus biplane. As a Master at St Edwards School, Oxford he revived the field club which reignited his interests in British lepidoptera. He served during the war in Burma with the 6th Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was awarded an MBE.
Retirement
Emmet retired in 1956 and moved to Saffron Walden, Essex, to care for his elderly mother and aunt. In the 1960s he studied the nepticulidae, breeding many species from their leaf mines and the caterpillars within. From the beginning he was an editor and author of The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland becoming senior editor in 1987. Emmet was a bachelor until his 60s marrying Katie, the widow of a close friend in 1972. She developed the garden and Emmet identified 990 species of butterfly and moth, which he believed to be the highest total for a garden in Britain. The couple visited all fifty-three of the 10 km squares in Essex searching for leaf mines and catching moths in a light trap.