"[2] The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's Harry Hoogstraal Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Entomology[3] honors his contributions to science.

degrees (1938 and 1942) from the University of Illinois at Chicago, before his training was interrupted by World War II to serve as an officer entomologist (1943–1946) in the United States Army.

As a master's degree candidate at the University of Illinois, he organized and led (1938–1941) four multi-disciplinary biological expeditions into the mountain and desert portions of western and southwestern Mexico.

During World War II, Hoogstraal was assigned to the U.S. Army 19th Medical General Laboratory, near Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, where in 1945 he and Willard V. King engaged in a massive taxonomic study of the mosquitoes of that area.

Additionally, their collections, deposited in the U.S. National Museum, have through the intervening years served as a rich resource to many other individuals involved in taxonomic research on Southwest Pacific mosquitoes.

This propensity enabled him to accomplish an enormous amount of work, as demonstrated by the fact that during his lifetime he authored or co-authored more than 500 publications, edited many more[4][5] and directed the translation of over 1,800 scientific papers and books.