Robert H. F. Rippon

Robert Henry Fernando Rippon (c. 1836[1] – 16 January 1917[2]) was an English zoologist, entomologist and illustrator.

He was a musician for a while but took a keen amateur interest in entomology and published a major multi-volume work on the birdwing butterflies, the Icones Ornithopterum (1898-1906).

He was a close friend of John Obadiah Westwood, to whom he dedicated the first volume of his magnum opus, the illustrated monograph Icones Ornithopterorum (1898 to 1906), about the birdwing butterflies.

[2] Towards the end of his life he lived at Upper Norwood and wished that his collection could be acquired in full rather than get broken up.

William Evans Hoyle wrote to Lord Rhondda suggesting that the value of the collection was worth more than the £1000 sought by Mrs Rippon.

[2] The Australian ladybird species Coelophora ripponi was named in his honour by Crotch in his 1874 A Revision of the Coleopterous Family Coccinellidae, a posthumously-published work for which Rippon checked the proofs and wrote the preface.