Alwen M. Evans

Alwen Myfanwy Evans
Born	1895 Stockport, England
Died	1937 aged 42 Mossley Hill, Liverpool
Alma mater	University of Manchester
Scientific career
Institutions	Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Thesis	A Short Illustrated Guide to the Anophelines of Tropical and South Africa

Alwen Myfanwy Evans (1895 - 1937)

Education and personal life

Evans studied at University of Manchester and was awarded a degree in entomology. She died of pneumonia in 1937.

Career

Evans was appointed at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1918. By 1921 she was promoted to a lecturer post in the Department of Entomology, becoming the first woman to join the department's academic staff. From 1926 she went on several expeditions to Africa during which she surveyed for mosquitoes and learnt how to identify new species. Places she visited included Freetown in Sierra Leone and also Kenya.

She was awarded a D. Sc. degree from University of Manchester for her thesis about the ecology of Ethiopian Anopheles mosquitoes that was published in 1927.

She specializing in tropical insects, particularly mosquitoes from Africa that are the vectors of pathogens that cause diseases, such as malaria. She led efforts to describe and survey the distribution of mosquito species, and saw this as a starting point for work to control the diseases distributed by these insects. Her high-quality and skilled illustrations of the insects and their habitats continued to be used long after her death. Her most significant work, the second volume of The Mosquitoes of the Ethiopian Region 2: Anophelini; Adults and Early Stages provided a very detailed account of all aspects of Anopheles mosquitoes and was published posthumously in 1938. Shortly before her death she took the near complete manuscript and illustrations to Frederick Wallace Edwards at the Natural History Museum, London and he ensured the monograph was published.

Publications

Evans was the author or co-author of at least 37 scientific articles, books and notes. The most significant was her monograph, the second volume The Mosquitoes of the Ethiopian Region. In addition her illustrations continue to be re-used for instruction and education.

• Alwen M. Evans (1938) The Mosquitoes of the Ethiopian Region 2: Anophelini; Adults and Early Stages (London: British Museum (Natural History), pp 404.
• Evans AM, Garnham PCC. (1936) The funestus series of Anopheles at Kisumu and a coastal locality in Kenya. Ann Trop Med Parasitol 30 511–20.
• Evans AM. (1934) Further notes on African anophelines, with a description of a new group of Myzomyia. Ann Trop Med Parasitol 28 549–70.
• Alwen M. Evans (1927) A short illustrated guide to the anophelines of tropical and South Africa University Press of Liverpool, Liverpool
• Newstead R, Evans AM (1922) A new tsetse-fly from the South Cameroons. Ann Trop Med Parasitol. 16 51–4.

Legacy

The species Anopheles evansae from Argentina was named after her.