William Schaus (January 11, 1858, in New York City – June 20, 1942) was an American entomologist who became known for his major contribution to the knowledge and description of new species of the Neotropical Lepidoptera.
[1] He was educated initially at Exeter Academy and then in France and Germany,[1] and was influenced early in his career by Henry Edwards, although he also studied languages, art and music.
[1] He decided, despite parental opposition, and at the sacrifice of a promising career as successor in his father's business, to devote his life to the study of Lepidoptera.
Beginning in 1881, he travelled to Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Cuba, Jamaica, Dominica, Saint Kitts, the Guianas, Colombia and Brazil collecting over 200,000 Lepidoptera, and by the purchase of the Dognin Collection[1] of about 26,000 specimens of tropical moths and about 5,000 specimens of butterflies from the Old World, which was donated in 1901 and 1905 to the American Museum of Natural History.
[2][3] In 1919 Schaus joined the Bureau of Entomology of the United States Department of Agriculture and, in 1921, began a long association with the Smithsonian Institution as an honorary curator of insects in the United States National Museum,[3] to which he donated his library and his collection of Lepidoptera subsequent to 1905.