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Professor Dr. Alex Fain  was born in Mechelen (Belgium) in a family with French, German and Flemish roots. He spent his childhood and youth in Brussels and received a Chris- tian education at St Mary College (1932-1938). His father was an artist. As a physician, holder of a diploma from the Catholic University of Louvain (1932-1938), his career began from 1939 to1957 in the Belgian Congo where he was director of a hospital in which he carried out mainly surgery and then director of a medical laboratory, and in Rwanda where he was also director of a medical laboratory. On his return to Belgium, Professor Alex Fain taught Parasitology in the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp and in the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain- la-Neuve, as well as Acarology in several universities in England, in France and in Switzerland. When he retired from active service in 1982 he became a scientiﬁc collaborator of the Department of Ento- mology in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, and carried on his activities of research till 2006.

Professor Alex Fain was a courteous and hospita- ble scientist, and a hard worker interested in all that concerned biology and medicine. He had a strong will, was persevering, and made no secret of his great passion for Acarology. This passion led him to set up and to develop during his whole career a very large collection of mites made up of around 100,000 microscopic slides and estimated to contain more than 30,000 specimens of type series. Because of its size, species representation and wide breadth of cove- rage in certain groups such as e.g. parasitic mites, Fain’s collection is an important national and world- wide resource. Known throughout the world for his acarological works, the ﬁrst contributions of Professor Alex Fain, besides purely medical works, were devoted to para- sitology (Trypanosomiasis and parasitic worms), insects (Tabanidae, Culicidae and Simuliidae) and molluscs. His ﬁrst paper on mites was published in 1947 and concerned histopathological injuries due to Pneumonyssus duttoni. Actually, Professor Alex Fain became rapidly interested essentially in systematics and taxonomy so that the largest part of his 1,160 contributions was devoted to these subjects. All in all, he described more than 2,580 taxa new to science and distributed in a quite eclectic way among Bacteria (12 serogroups), Protozoa (1 subspecies), Nematoda (10 species), Cestoda (14 species), Trematoda (77 spe- cies), Pentastomida (3 species), Insecta (58 species), and Acari (2,407 species). Professor Alex Fain joined in several scientiﬁc, Belgian or foreign associations as co-founder of the Belgian Society of Parasitology, honorary member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, titu- lar member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Overseas, honorary member of the American Society of Parasitologists, member of the International Council of the International Congresses of Acaro- logy, expert of the WHO for parasitic diseases, and Belgian delegate to World Federation of Parasitology. Honours received by Professor Alex Fain include: Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal du Lion (1947), Médaille de l’eﬀort de Guerre Colonial 1940-45 (1948), Étoile de Service en or du Congo Belge (1956), Grand Oﬀicier de l’Ordre de la Couronne (1976), and Grand Oﬀicier de l’Ordre de Léopold (1982). Several rewards were conferred upon Professor Alex Fain: lauréat des Bourses de voyage, lauréat de l’Institut Royal Colonial Belge, prix Broden de la Société belge de Médecine Tropicale, prix Lamarck de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, prix Wetrens de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, Berlese Award 1977, and honorary member of the International Congress of Acarology in Columbus (U.S.A.).

A list of the contributions of Professor Alex Fain and of the new species he described can be found at http://www.srbe-kbve.be/sites/default/files/liste_des_travaux_publies_par_le_dr_alex_fain_1939_2003.pdf

Source :Georges Wauthy : Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, rue Vautier 29, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium- André V. Bochkov & Sergey V. Mironov : Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St-Petersburg, Russia in  Acarologia.