Bill Overal has always liked bugs, and so it is no wonder that he became an entomologist. And what better place is there to study these critters than the Brazilian rainforest? He works at the Emilio Goeldi Museum , in Belém, portal city to the fantastic and important Amazon. Bill studied biology at Northwestern University in Evanston , Illinois , before moving on to graduate studies at the University of Kansas ,in Lawrence . He wandered the world ( Europe and Africa ) before entering the Goeldi Museum in 1976. He married nurse Graça in 1980, and they have three Brazilian kids: David, a genetics graduate student (24), Ranier, a law student (21); and Nancy, university student and English teacher (20). (Beware: he carries family photos.) As an entomologist, Bill has discovered how interesting bees, beetles, butterflies, and even people can be. His hobby is reading history (who won the 100 Years War, anyway?) while listening to music(from Bach to bebop). He suspects he would have enjoyed living in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, especially for the music and science, but we all know what happened soon after that. In his attempts to get folks to appreciate insects, Bill has written over 60 scientific papers and 90 newspaper articles on our arthropod friends. Unfortunately, his revolutionary personal insect attractant “ON” was a commercial flop.
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