HISTORY OF THE 
CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB* 
By Janice R. Matthews 
Department of Entomology 
University of Georgia 
Athens, Ga. 30601 
The Beginnings of the Cambridge Entomological Club 
On a Friday evening, January 9, 1874, Dr. Hermann A. Hagen, 
Professor of Entomology at Harvard College and Curator at the 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, invited a group of twelve men 
to his home at 7 Putnam Street in Cambridge, to consider the 
question of forming an entomological society. Most of them had 
been meeting informally for several years as a section of the Boston 
Society of Natural History, but some had more ambitious plans. 
Wanting to publish a journal, to meet outside of Boston, and to 
have members from all over the country, they desired to form 
“an organization independent of any other” — which was to be the 
Cambridge Entomological Club. 
Among the twelve present, probably the two most influential that 
first evening were Dr. Hagen and Samuel Scudder [1,2]. Dr. 
Hagen was the first professor of entomology in the United States; 
he had left Germany in 1867 at the invitation of Louis Agassiz to 
take charge of the entomological department of the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, and had been appointed to his 
professorship at Harvard in 1870, at the age of 53. f But although 
*This article is based on a term paper submitted in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of Master in Arts in Teaching from 
Harvard University, 1967. The secretaries’ records, minutes of the Club 
meetings, and other pertinent documents were placed at my disposal by the 
officers of the Club. In the present account, quoted passages without specific 
references are taken directly from the minutes of the meetings. 
The original manuscript has been placed on permanent file with other 
Cambridge Entomological Club historical documents in the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology; it was revised and updated for publication here by 
the editor, F. M. Carpenter. 
fEntomology had been recognized in America as a serious branch of 
science since the latter part of the eighteenth century, however. William 
Dandridge Peck [3], the first native born American entomologist, initiated 
the scientific study of insects at Harvard as that institution’s first professor 
of natural history; as early as 1837 his student, Thaddeus W. Harris, while 
acting as librarian of Harvard College, gave a course in entomology that 
included brief field excursions [3,4]. Following Hagen’s arrival in Cam- 
bridge, Harvard became a center of entomological activity, involving 
undergraduate and graduate students as well as more mature investigators. 
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