British educationalist who lived in the West Indies and British Malaya (Malaysia & Singapore). Wheeler collected plants and butterflies in his spare time and studied the philosophy of biology. Born in Highgate, L. Richmond Wheeler studied at the University of London before obtaining a post teaching science and mathematics at a grammar school in Antigua, in 1912. Here he collected and studied the flora, sending specimens to the British Museum, and authored "The Flora of Antigua", published in the Journal of Botany in 1916. He spent a year in Trinidad after joining the Colonial Service in 1914 before returning to England to serve in the First World War, first in the Middle East and later as a member of the Royal Flying Corps stationed in the Balkans. Following the war he moved back to Trinidad, working as a science teacher once more, until in 1921 he was transferred to British Malaya, where he held positions in the education department including schools inspector. On his retirement in 1938 he was Inspector of Schools, Penang.

In his spare time in British Malaya Wheeler collected butterflies and authored several papers on the insects. He also completed four books: Scouting in the Tropics (1926), The Modern Malay (1928), Vitalism: its history and validity (1939) and Harmony of nature, a study in co-operation for existence (1947). In Vitalism, which Wheeler submitted for his PhD thesis at the University of London, he reviewed the history of the notion in the West, defining Vitalism as "all the various doctrines which, from the time of Aristotle, have described things as actuated by some power or principle additional to mechanics and chemistry." He was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1939 and settled in Seaford, East Sussex, during the last decade of his life, with his wife, Doris Milligan, and two sons.

Sources:
D.H. Wheeler, 1949, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 161(2): 253-254
L.R. Wheeler, 1939, Vitalism: its history and validity.