Theodore Cockerell was a pioneer in bee studies
By Carol Taylor
Theodore Dru Allison Cockerell became one of the most distinguished scholars the University of Colorado has ever known. But at first, he came to Boulder for his wife’s job.
In 1904, his second wife Wilmatte Porter, a Stanford graduate, landed the biology teacher position at the State
Preparatory School, the precursor to Boulder High. In this 1935 photograph at left, botanist Wilmatte Porter
Cockerell (1871-1957) is shown with biologist Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell (1866-1948), whom she married in 1900.
In 1901, he named the ultramarine blue chromodorid Mexichromis porterae in her honor. Before and after their
marriage in 1900, they frequently went on collecting expeditions together and assembled a large private library of natural history films, which they showed to schoolchildren
and public audiences to promote the cause of environmental conservation. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 90-105, Science Service Records, Image No. SIA2008-1019