South African teacher and entomologist from the Hague, Netherlands. Anthonie Janse, who emmigrated to South Africa in 1899, began his teaching career in small local schools in northern Transvaal. After his internment at Pinetown during the Second Boer War, he worked for a short time as a photographer in Pietersburg. He then joined the newly established Normal College, Pretoria, where he taught biology, geography, and human physiology until his retirement in 1937. To help his students, he wrote and later published a rambler's guide to the area, which included a plant family key. Over the years he built a reputation as an authority on South African moths, but continued to take an interest in botany and collected with Reino Leendertz. In 1923 Pretoria University College, where he had been lecturing for many years, made him an honorary Professor in Entomology, followed the next year by the University of South Africa. After his retirement Janse started a second career as an entomologist at Transvaal Museum. He added more than 100,000 specimens to the museum's collection and completed his multi-volume work The Moths of South Africa (1932-1964), which is still regarded as a definitive text. He was a founding member of the Entomological Association of South Africa and of the South African Biological Society, which awarded him the Senior Captain Scott Medal in 1922 and elected him five times president. In 1948 he received a medal from The South African Association for the Advancement of Science. He is commemorated in the names of many species of moth and one plant, Delosperma jansei N.E. Br.
Sources:
1970, "In Memoriam Prof Dr A.J.T. Janse", Journal of the South African Biological Society, 11: 58-60.