R. F. Hussey was born in San Francisco, California 16 November 1896 and died 19 August 1968 in Gainesville, Florida. He held academic positions at New York University, Florida Southern College and the University of Florida, and was to have been retired from the latter as their first Professor Emeritus of Biology. For about twenty years following 1926 he held administrative positions in the New York Academy of Medicine and Doctors Hospital and during this time he published little except the excellent catalog of Pyrrhocoridae (which at that time included the family Largidae) as fascicle 3 of the General Catalogue of Hemiptera. This was his most significant contribution to Hemipterology. He envisioned and collected some materials for the catalogue of Heteroptera of North America, a work carried forward by J. L. Herring and finally brought to fruition in 1988 by editors T. J. Henry and R. C. Froeschner
