Obituary

his youth was troubled by the early loss of his father. After completing secondary school he went to a technical college in Amsterdam. In 1937 he moved with his family to Eindhoven where he had a management position within the Philips company. His passion for bees started in 1950 when he was confined to his bed, because of a hernia. Through reading the “Souvenirs Entomologiques ” by the famous French entomolo-gist J.H. Fabre he got a life-long interest in Hymenoptera-Aculeata, and especially in the group of bees that collect pollen in a special hairy patch on their belly, the Megachilinae. After a successful career, which took him to many places all over Europe, he took early retirement at the age of 58. For 25 years, till the age of 83, he worked with an admirable persistance on the Palaearctic Megachilinae. The result is a large number of publications, some reviews, the descriptions of several species new to sci-ence, honorary staff membership of the National Museum of Natural History at Lei