Stuart W. Frost papers

Stuart Frost was born in Tarrytown, NY in 1891, and showed a natural penchant for studying insects from a young age. Throughout his childhood he was noted for bringing home live insects, frogs, and mice, and by the age of 18 he was recording his observations and learning about proper preservation of specimens on his frequent trips to the American Museum of Natural History.

In 1911, he went to Cornell for college, and by his sophomore year he was an assistant to reknowned entomologist J.H. Comstock. After his graduation, he worked at a research station in Ardentsville, PA, and completed his Ph. D. on Diptera in 1925.During his first sabbatical, he traveled to the Smithsonian Research station at Barro Colorado Island in Panama to study leaf-mining insects and made trips to Ecuador to collect insects.

Frost transferred to Pennsylvania State College in 1937 to teach entomology. There he gathered numerous insects and established an organized insect reference collection for the Zoology/Entomology Department. Upon retirement in 1957, Dr. Frost's initiative was continued and over the next 13 years he added an additional 400,000 specimens. This collection, now known as the Frost Entomological Museum, was established as one of the major regional collections in the eastern United States.