The current paper summarizes the scientific career of Dr. John T. Polhemus, 1929–2013. It begins with a compendium of his extensive field work devoted to the collection of aquatic Heteroptera, cross-referenced to his associated field collection numbers in order to allow future workers to more accurately associate samples and localities. This is followed by a list of his 288 peer-reviewed publications, the taxonomic names proposed within them, comprising 474 species, 54 genera, and 5 tribes, and the holotype repositories for the specieslevel taxa.