Alexander Craw was born on Ayr, Scotland, on August 3, 1850. He emigrated to California, USA, when he was 23, and by 1875 was placed in charge of a very large orange grove near Los Angeles. He helped D.W. Coquillett in investigations of chemical control of the new pest cottony cushion scale. He was the first to suggest use of natural enemies for control of this pest when chemicals failed. In 1890, he was appointed quarantine inspector at the port of San Francisco by the California Board of Agriculture, and it was he who developed and put into practice the principles of horticultural quarantine. In 1904 he accepted a position as Superintendent and Inspector of the Hawaiian Board of Agriculture and Forestry in Honolulu, where he remained until his death in 1908. Most of his publications were about control of pests and about exclusion of new pests by quarantine, but he did describe a few new species of insects.