The bug collector

Daylight savings is just about over for another year. It would have made George Vernon Hudson sad.
George loved bugs. He loved them so much that all he wanted to do was collect them. George had been born in England on April 20, 1867, to Emily and Charles and by the time he was 14 he already had a large collection of bugs and had already published a paper.
He was bullied at school for his interests.
In 1881 he and his father moved to New Zealand where there was a whole new set of bugs to hunt for.
After a short stint on a farm he went to work at the Post Office where he became a chief clerk for the whole of his working life.
He published his first books on insects aged only 19 - the first of seven he would write.
But he really wanted more bugs.
In 1907, he went on the Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition to extend the magnetic survey of New Zealand by investigating the Auckland and Campbell islands but botanical, biological, and zoological surveys were also conducted.
Back at home he wanted more and more time and while he had time while he was shift working, he wanted more in the evenings.
In 1895, he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two hour extension to daylight hours. It wasn’t immediately taken up but he kept trying.
New Zealand finally introduced Daylights Savings in 1927 with the Summer-Time Act.
In 1933, George was the first recipient (together with Ernest Rutherford) of the T. K. Sidey Medal, set up by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
With all his new daylight hours George went on to collect so many bugs that it became the biggest collection in the country, now housed in Te Papa.
Among them are moths, butterflies, beetles, cicadas, grasshoppers and wētā, flies, wasps, and aquatic insects.
Originally he intended to leave his collection - which his wife and daughter had helped him collect - to the British Museum, however an entomologist from the then Dominion Museum persuaded him to bequeath it to the national museum.
The collection is still in use today by scientists.
Bugs weren’t his only interest though. He also built and installed a telescope in an observatory at the back of his property in Wellington.
George had married Florence Gillon, a teacher, in 1893 and had one daughter.
He died on April 5, 1946 and is buried in the Saint Mary’s Anglican Churchyard in Karori.​