John Alcock

Dr. John Alcock was born in Charlottesville, VA in 1942 and died in Mesa, Arizona on January 15, 2023. He grew up in rural Landenburg, PA surrounded by farms, woods and marshes. He was given a pair of binoculars at age seven and this gift sparked his life-long passion for birdwatching and nature. 

He dedicated his academic career to the study of living things. He graduated from Amherst University in 1965 and received his PhD from Harvard University in Evolutionary Biology in 1969, studying under Ernst Mayr and E.O. Wilson.  

After graduation, he was quicky hired by the University of Washington. A field trip to the Chiricahua mountains in southern Arizona changed his life. He fell in love with the Sonoran Desert and decided to move to Arizona. He said on many occasions that the Sonoran Desert is the only place he would ever consider living.

He joined the Zoology faculty, now named the School of Life Sciences, at Arizona State University in 1972. At ASU, Dr. Alcock was among the first to be named Regent’s professor. He was a prolific author of hundreds of articles in the scientific and popular press.  In 1975 his Animal Behavior textbook was published.  With 11 editions, the textbook was highly regarded and was printed internationally in many different languages. He also received many awards and professional recognitions.

He had an insatiable curiosity for the natural world. He loved the birds and insects in the Sonoran Desert and bees and orchids in Western Australia. He was a quintessential field biologist, armed with his binoculars, specimen jars, and insect net.  His favorite study site was in the Usury Mountains near Phoenix, where he carried out decades of research on the mating systems of insects. Dr. Alcock was especially interested in how tarantula hawk wasps find mates. Year after year he would trek to learn how these formidable wasps interacted with males and females of their species. In later years he repeatedly visited Western Australia where he discovered a new species of orchid, studied the mating behavior of Dawson Burrowing bees, and made lasting friendships with human beings.