Background
Usinger was born on October 24, 1912 in Fort Bragg, California, United States; the son of Henry Clay and Edith (Johnson) Usinger.
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Usinger was born on October 24, 1912 in Fort Bragg, California, United States; the son of Henry Clay and Edith (Johnson) Usinger.
Usinger received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1935 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1939 from the University California at Berkeley.
Usinger began his career at Bishop Museum in 1935, where he made many contacts and found a dissertation project in a tribe of Hawaiian Miridae (plant bugs) which had undergone extensive radiation on the islands. A year later he was accepted at California Academy of Sciences. Then in 1939, Robert was appointed an instructor in entomology at the University of California on the Davis campus.
During World War II, he served in the Pacific in the Sanitary Corps of the United States Public Health Service, working on malaria control and attained the rank of Major. He returned from service in 1946 and joined the faculty in the Department of Entomology as a professor of entomology at the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked for twenty two years. He taught courses in systematic entomology and aquatic entomology, as well as numerous graduate seminars. Also Usinger served as chairman of the Division of Entomology at the same university from 1963 to 1968.
(The magnificent and much-loved Sierra Nevada, called the ...)
Usinger was a president of the Entomological Society of America in 1965-1966. He was a member of the Royal Entomological Society of London, Linnean Society of London, Pacific Coast Entomological Society and Society of Systematic Zoology.
Also Robert served on the Academic Senate committees concerned with Budget and Interdepartmental Relations, American History and Institutions, the Editorial Committee and the Committee on Committees for which he also served as State-wide chairman.
Usinger collected the works of Charles Darwin and Linnaeus.
On June 24, 1938 Robert Usinger married Martha Boone Putnam. They have a daughter and a son.