William Culp Darrah

William Culp Darrah (1909, Reading, Pennsylvania – 1989, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) was an American professor of biology at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He was a specialist in paleobotany. He was also a noted authority on the history of photography, writing several books about 19th-century photo processes and photographers. As part of his interest in 19th-century photography, he assembled a collection of over 60,000 cartes-de-visite, which is now held at Penn State University.

Darrah was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well a member of Sigma Xi and the Botanical Society of America.

Selected bibliography

Biology

• Principles of paleobotany (1960)
• Textbook of paleobotany (1939)
• A critical review of the upper Pennsylvanian floras of eastern United States with notes on the Mazon Creek flora of Illinois (1969)

Photography

• A check list of Maine photographers who issued stereographs (1967)
• Stereo views, a history of stereographs in America and their collection (1964)
• An Album of stereographs : or, Our country victorious and now a happy home : from the collections of William Culp Darrah and Richard Russack (1977)
• The world of stereographs (1977)
• Cartes de visite in nin[e]teenth century photography (1981)

External links

• Papers of William C. Darrah, MS-128 at Gettysburg College
• William C. Darrah collection of cartes-de-visite, 1860-1900 HCLA 1515 at Pennsylvania State University Libraries