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Classroom Profile

Theodore Huntington Hubbell
The Michigan Alumnus 378

THEODORE H. HUBBELL, '20, Ph.D.
'34, of an almost one hundred percent 
Michigan alumni family, is Professor 
of Zoology and Curator of Insects in 
the University's Museum of Zoology. Just now he is busy with preparations 
for an entomological expedition to the
 highlands of Honduras. He and his
 family will be down there from June
 until mid-September, while Dr. Hub
bell and his son, Roger, now a student in the University's geology department, collect insects for the Museum
 and obtain materials for a report on 
agricultural pests of the region.

The 
expedition is sponsored by and will
 make its headquarters at the Escuela
 Agricola Pan-American, an agricultural
 school near Tegucigalpa established
 and maintained by the United Fruit 
Company for the benefit of the Cen
tral American republics.

Dr. Hub
bell's special interest is in the Orthop
tera — the grasshoppers, crickets, 
 preying mantis, walking sticks, and 
related insects. His research concerns 
the classification, distribution, and 
evolution of this group, and particularly of the North and Central American species. In his position at the 
Museum he is in charge of all insect collections, which now comprise 
between a million and a million five 
hundred thousand specimens, and fall 
into two categories, those maintained 
for research by staff and graduate stu
dents, and the reference collections. 
 The latter are primarily North American, with special emphasis on the
 Michigan insect fauna. The groups 
best represented in the Museum col
lections are the Orthoptera, the drag
on flies, the butterflies and moths, the 
crane flies (Tipulidae), and the beetles.

Dr. Hubbell was born in Detroit, and 
attended high school in Manila, P. I. 
He graduated from Benzonia (Michi
gan) Academy before entering the
 University, and he later attended
 Bussey Institution at Harvard. In
 1923, he joined the faculty of the University of Florida as an Instructor of 
Biology, and was promoted until he 
attained the rank of Professor of 
Biology and Geology in 1934. For two
 years he was Acting Head of the 
biology department there, and during 
the war he was for a time Chairman of 
that University's War Training
 Courses in geography.

In 1936, Dr.
 Hubbell was named Associate Curator
 of Orthoptera at the University of 
Michigan, and served as Honorary
 Associate Curator from 1937 to 1946,
 when he assumed his present title. He 
is a member of numerous professional
 organizations, and has served as Presi
dent of the Florida Chapter of Sigma
 Xi, and President of the Florida Ento
mological Society.

Included in Dr. 
Hubbell's Michigan family are his
 wife, Grace Griffin Hubbell, '20; his
 father, Clarence W. Hubbell, '93e, 
C.E.'04; two brothers—George E. 
Hubbell, '29e, and Roger S. Hubbell. 
e'22-'23, '24-'26; and a sister, Mary Bliss Hubbell Huntington, '17-'19,
 '23-'24, '34-'35. The Professor and his
 wife have three children, and as to a 
hobby, he says: "Finding a new bug in 
the Florida scrub or the Michigan 
jack-pine plains gives me as much 
thrill as a hunter gets from bagging a
 deer."