Andrew Delmar Hopkins - Life History

Life History

A.D. Hopkins was born in Jackson County, Virginia (later Jackson County, West Virginia). His took an interest in nature from childhood, and by the age of twelve, he was collecting insects. This curiosity would eventually be channeled into an intense desire to study forest insects and the changes they effected in woodlands. Yet even though Hopkins was seminal in developing the scope of forest entomology in North America, his only formal education was in the county schools of West Virginia. After his schooling and at the age of 17, he took the reins of his grandfather's farm. His work organizing one of the first farm cooperatives during that period brought him to the attention of the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station. The State was looking for an entomologist and Hopkins volunteered, making it clear that the pay was not important to him, and asking only that he be allowed to work from his home. To alleviate the Station's concern that he wasn't professionally trained, he sent the director the manuscript he'd written about a local agricultural pest complete with his original drawings.

His work gradually shifted from farming to scientific research. He started his investigations for the Station by determining which insects were causing the most damage in West Virginia. He traveled throughout the state, gathering the data he needed by interviewing farmers. On one of those trips, he and a co-worker discovered a major bark beetle outbreak in the eastern highlands, on Cheat Mountain. The beetles, along with the Hessian fly's effects on wheat, then became the main focus of his early work. Both helped build his reputation, given the scientific understanding they brought to entomology.

Hopkins also taught Economic Entomology at the University of West Virginia, where he'd received an honorary doctorate. Through the 1890s and into the 20th century, he would acquire ever-greater expertise in his chosen field. That expertise increased his stature in the scientific community. His increased status meant that he was given the opportunity to excel in his professional role as other entomologists elaborated on his work. He eventually left his position as vice-director of the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station to resume his work with the US Department of Agriculture, where he stayed for the rest of his career.

He had originally worked for the Department as a special agent, with most of his work in the Western United States studying the impact of bark beetles on Western conifers. By 1904 after his return, he rose to become head of the newly formed Division of Forest Insects (Bureau of Entomology) in Washington D.C.. Hopkins retired in 1923, and he returned home to his farm in Wood County, West Virginia, where he'd started his career He continued developing his ideas on bioclimatics, and the Department of Agriculture established a field station which was given the title "the Kanawha Farms Intercontinental Base Station for Bioclimatic Research." He also took up plant breeding once again, an avocation that had first gotten him noticed during his earliest days with the farm cooperative he'd helped start. He died from unknown causes in 1948.