Yolo-San Francisco-Alameda County CA Obituary Project Obituaries.....LANGE Jr. , William Harry July 5 2004 ********************************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/obits/ca/obitsca.htm ********************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Peggy B. Perazzo pbperazzo@comcast.net January 20, 2005, 10:30 pm "The Davis Enterprise," Tuesday, July 20, 2004 William H. Lange, Jr. William Harry Lange, Jr., a third-generation Californian, died July 15, 2004, in Davis after a long illness. He was born in San Francisco on Sept. 2, 1912. Raised in Oakland, where his father was a photo-engraver, he graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1929. During his boyhood, besides being a budding entomologist chasing blue butterflies, he became an Eagle Scout. He pursued his bachelor's (1933), master's (1934), and Ph.D. in entomology at UC Berkeley (1941). He had the unusual distinction of receiving his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in one year. At that time, associates at the Berkeley Experiment Station were informed they would have one year to complete their Ph.D. or get fired. Harry immediately left Half Moon Bay, where he was working on the artichoke plume moth, and moved back to Berkeley. He handed his dissertation in on Dec. 6, 1941, the eve of Pearl Harbor, and often remarked that he was lucky he had turned it in that day because he always wrote at night, and a complete blackout was imposed on the Berkeley campus for the next four years. During the war years, he was stationed at Salinas, where he researched vegetable insect pests and worked part-time on Parthenium argentatum (guayule) in a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture war effort to produce natural rubber. In 1947, he was sent to Saipan to help restore coconut as a commercial crop in the Northern Mariana Islands by finding a parasite to control the coconut rhinoceros beetle. Because of his side interest in snails and slugs, he was also assigned to find a control for the giant African snail that turned the runways into a slippery mess. He came to UC Davis in 1946 as a lecturer and retired as a full professor in 1983. An internationally known researcher, teacher, taxonomist and systematist, he was a specialist in aphids and aquatic Lepidoptera. He wrote more than 170 publications covering various facets of entomology and pest management. He was most proud of his work with UC Davis geneticists V.M. Williamson and I. Kaloshian, "An aphid-resistance locus is tightly linked to the nematode-resistance gene, Mi, in tomato," which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995. Lange was a tireless worker for agriculturists in the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Salinas valleys and saved the rice crop in California from the rice water weevil in 1961. He would mentor young entomologists, serving as the 4-H judge for insect collections for Yolo County and shepherding hundreds of students through their courses, many of whom returned to their countries of origin to share what they had learned. During his career at UC Davis, he was chairman of the committee to build Briggs Hall, chairman of the library and research committee and a pioneer in the development of the master's degree in integrated pest management curriculum. He donated more than 1 million African insects to the Bohart Museum of Entomology as well as a life-time collection of entomological and related books and periodical sets to Shields Library. He was a trumpet player in the Cal Band for five years and a member of the Berkeley and Oakland symphonies. He also played in the UC Davis Aggie Marching Band for five years as a faculty member to fill in instrumentation. For many years, he would play "The First Noel" on his trumpet on top of Deebo's for Davis' annual Christmas parade. He received the Award of Distinction of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the C.W. Woodworth Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America. The Lange metalmark butterfly, an endangered species whose only known habitat is the Antioch Dunes, was named for him by Dr. John A. Comstock of the L.A. County Museum of Natural History. He was preceded in death by his brother, Marvin Ernst Lange. He is survived by his wife, Ellen, of Davis and his three daughters from his first wife, Pauline Schulthess, of Kelseyville: Marilyn Larson and her husband George of Bakersfield, and her two children, Dean Foxx of Bakersfield, and Deanna Whalen and her husband Brian of Temecula; Diana Sawall and her husband Erwin of Cave Junction, Ore., and their three children, Curt, of Cave Junction, Erin and his wife Jane, of Medford, Ore., and Erica Fica and her husband Michael of Flower Mound, Texas; and Becky Adams of Carmichael and her three children, Laura Siebert and her husband Michael of Sacramento, Genny Schrader and her husband Jon of Elk Grove, and Mark Adams of Carmichael. He is also survived by his brother, C. Dan Lange and his wife Thelma of San Mateo; his nephews, Chris and his wife Billie Ann of Visalia, and Andrew and his wife Jean Taylor of Napa; and his niece, Nancy Cutler and her husband Jay of San Francisco. He is also survived by 14 great-grandchildren, seven grand-nieces and nephews and one great-grand nephew. Lange, who was a soft-spoken, self-effacing man who referred to himself as a "bugologist," had this to say about his career spanning six decades, "Although the Smithsonian Institution offered me my first job - to do taxonomic work on Lepidoptera (moths)-I chose to remain with the University of California, becoming a teacher and agricultural researcher by day and a biosystematist on aquatic Lepidoptera at night. I have never regretted this decision." Private interment will be at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, with a memorial service to take place later this year. Additional Comments: Submitted with the permission of the "The Davis Enterprise." (315 G Street, Davis, CA 95616) . File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/yolo/obits/gob4819langejr.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/caobfiles/ File size: 6.3 Kb