D. K. M. Kevan


Prof Douglas Keith McEwan Kevan FRSE MIB was a British zoologist and entomologist, largely working in Canada. In private life he was generally known as Keith Kevan.
He was born in Helsinki in Finland on 31 October 1920 during what is thought to have been an extended business trip on the part of his father, Douglas Keely Kevan, and his wife Gynnyth Paine.
He was educated at George Watson's College in Edinburgh at both primary and secondary levels, 1925 to 1937. He then studied Sciences at the University of Edinburgh graduating with a BSc in 1941. He left Britain during the Second World War and continued studies at Imperial College, St Augustin, in Trinidad under a Vans Dunlop scholarship.
He returned to Britain after the war as a lecturer in agricultural zoology at the University of Nottingham. He gained a doctorate in 1956. In 1958 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were James Ritchie, Alexander David Peacock, Sir Michael Swann and Greville Friend. Later in 1958 he took the post of Professor of Zoology at McGill University in Canada. In 1971 he moved to be Director of the Lyman Entomological Museum in Quebec. He was President of the Entomological Society of Canada 1972–73. He was a member of Sigma Xi.
He had successful heart by-pass surgery in 1976 and retired in 1986. He died of a heart attack on 9 July 1991, and was survived by his wife Kathleen and three sons.

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