Robert Cyril Layton Perkins FRS (15 November 1866 – 29 September 1955) was a distinguished British entomologist, ornithologist, and naturalist noted for his work on the fauna of the islands of Hawaii and on Hymenoptera.
Perkins was born on 15 November 1866 at Badminton, Gloucestershire and was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, St. Albans – his father, Rev Charles Perkins, was the headmaster – and at Merchant Taylors' School before obtaining a scholarship in classics to Jesus College, Oxford in 1885.
[3] In 1891, a committee appointed by the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science asked Perkins to investigate the land fauna of the Hawaiian Islands, and he was engaged in this for almost ten years, conducting research on the islands and carrying out studies at the University of Cambridge on his trips back home.
The fruits of this research first began to be published in 1899, in Fauna Hawaiiensis (edited by David Sharp), and he completed his work in 1913 with a general introduction to the series.
[2] In October 1901, Perkins married Zoe Lucy Sherrard Alatau, eldest daughter of A.T. Atkinson.