In Memoriam: Niels Peder Kristensen (1943–2014)

Abstract

, Honorary Member and former president of SEL, passed away on Saturday December 6 th 2014 in Copenhagen. While his death was not unexpected, its timing came earlier than we had thought or hoped. His loss is felt widely and intensely. Born on March 2 nd 1943, Niels was the second child of Thorkil and Ellen Christine Kristensen (nee Nielsen). His father was an academic, politician and thinker who served as Minster of Finance in two different government cabinets, and later as General Secretary of the OECD. Growing up in such an environment undoubtedly had a profound influence on Niels' own world view, one which was powerfully international in its expression, yet retaining a strong interest and deep concern for Danish issues-local and national. Niels developed an interest in entomology and lepidopterology in particular at an early age, and once told TJS about the first time, when eight years old, he visited the Entomology Department at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen (ZMUC) 'clutching his father's hand'. After completing high school at Birkerød Statsskole in 1961, Niels enrolled as a biology student at the University of Copenhagen, and quickly became a regular visitor to the Entomology Department of the Museum, where he had already started as a volunteer during his last years at high school. In 1965, while still a student, he published his first paper, which was on the faunistics of Danish cicadas. From the very start of his scientific career, one of Niels' abiding interests was the evolution (particularly evolutionary morphology) of primitive Lepidoptera. Indeed, the work for his Mag. Scient. degree was on the comparative morphology of the primitive glossatan family, Eriocraniidae. During this study, Niels spent the academic year 1966-67 at the University of

Genera of Tischeriidae (Lepidoptera): a review of the global fauna, with descriptions of new taxa

“…By combining the prefix "neo" (meaning new and derived from the Neotropics) and the surname of our late colleague, this species is named in honour of Professor DSc. Niels Peder Kristensen (1943Kristensen ( -2014, one of the greatest Lepidoptera morphologist and taxonomist of all time, an inspiring teacher, and outstanding supervisor, editor-in-chief of two Lepidoptera volumes of "Handbook of Zoology", former director of Zoologisk Museum of Københavns Universitet, and honorary member of academic societies (see Simonsen et al 2015…”