Carl Leavitt Hubbs

Carl Leavitt Hubbs (born October 19, 1894 in Williams , Arizona , † June 30, 1979 in La Jolla , California ) was an American ichthyologist .

Live and act

Carl Leavitt Hubbs was the son of Charles Leavitt Hubbs and Elizabeth Hubbs, née Goss. His father was a farmer, owner of an iron mine and editor of a newspaper. The family made several moves before settling in San Diego and Hubbs' first exposure to natural history . After the parents divorced in 1907, he lived with his mother, who ran a private school in Redondo Beach , California. Hubbs learned how to harvest shellfish and other marine life from his maternal grandmother, Jane Goble Goss, one of the first practicing doctors in California .

One of the teachers, impressed with Hubb's scientific abilities, recommended that he study chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley . The family moved again to Los Angeles , where George Bliss Culver (1873-1949), one of the many volunteers of the ichtyologist David Starr Jordan (1851-1931), encouraged him to give up his ornithological studies and instead study ichthyology, especially the ichthyofauna the rivers of Los Angeles, little explored at the time.

After completing his studies at Stanford University , the ichthyologist Charles Henry Gilbert (1859–1928) became Hubbs' mentor. Gilbert put him in charge of Stanford University's fish collection. During this period he met the ichthyologist John Otterbein Snyder (1867-1943), who was also a student of Jordan. Hubbs received his Bachelor of Arts in 1916 and his Master's degree in 1917 .

From 1917 to 1920, Hubbs worked as an assistant curator in the Department of Ichthyology and Herpetology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago . On June 15, 1918, he married Laura Cornelia Clark, with whom he had three children, daughter Frances and two sons Clark and Earl. His wife, who received her BA in 1915 and her Masters degree in 1916, was a math teacher. In 1940 Frances married the ichthyologist Robert Rush Miller (1916–2003), with whom Hubbs had worked frequently since 1938.

In 1920 he became curator of the Ichthyology Department of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan, a position he held for 24 years. In 1927 he received his doctorate with a thesis on "the consequences of the structural changes in the rate of evolution in fish in relation to certain evolutionary problems" for Ph.D. Hubbs was among the staff who contributed significantly to the expansion of the museum collection. In 1929 he took part in an expedition to Java , during which five tons of new material were collected. In the following years he studied the hybridization between different fish species.

In addition to his position as a conservator, Hubbs was the first director of the Institute for Fisheries Research in the Department of Conservation of Michigan between 1930 and 1935. His research areas were regional fauna, mortality , water pollution , growth and the predatory behavior of fish. While working at the University of Michigan , Hubbs published over 300 articles, almost all of which deal with fish. In addition to the US ichthyofauna, Hubbs studied a large collection of Japanese fish species.

From 1944 Hubbs taught biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, San Diego, where he was replaced in 1969 by Francis Bertody Sumner. From 1969 to 1979 he held a position as professor emeritus.

Due to the restrictions of the Second World War , the Scripps Institution was forced to rent its research ship to the United States Army , which significantly limited the research possibilities. In 1946, Hubbs received an offer from the film actor Errol Flynn , who was himself the son of a marine biologist, to travel to Guadeloupe on the yacht " Zaca " , where he discovered the island's endemic biodiversity.

After the war, Hubbs did research in the fields of commercial fishing and recreational fishing. He observed the changes in the population structure of fish depending on the temperature fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean . He studied ancient climates using mollusc shells . His research led to the establishment of a laboratory in 1957 that was responsible for dating the archaeological and geological samples. In 1973, Hubbs bequeathed his collection to the Archaeological Museum of Man in San Diego.

Scientific work and memberships

Hubbs published 712 publications. He first studied the ichthyofauna of the Great Lakes , but after moving to La Jolla, he expanded his research to include marine fauna, including mammals. Hubbs worked as an active advisor on articles for popular science magazines and for the Encyclopædia Britannica as well as on radio broadcasts. Between 1920 and 1930 he made the public aware of the need to protect marine mammal habitats. For his services to environmental protection, he received the gold medal of the San Diego Natural History Society. Hubbs was a member of several scientific societies, including the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists , the Wildlife Society, and the Linnean Society of London . He has received multiple awards from the Academy of Natural Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences . In 1952 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

Dedication names

Hubbs is honored in the epithet of five species of fish, numerous species of fish, one species and species of lichen , two species of molluscs, one species of crab, three species of cave-living arthropods and two species of insects. In addition, the Hubbs beaked whale ( Mesoplodon carlhubbsi ), the fossil wave runner species Oceanodroma hubbsi and the dried up Lake Hubbs in Nevada bear his name.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Norris (1974): p. 586.
2. ↑ Norris (1974): p. 587.
3. ↑ Shor et al. (1987): S. 226.
4. ↑ Norris (1974): p. 592.
5. ↑ Sterling et al. (1997): S. 385.
6. ↑ Norris (1974): p. 581.

literature

• Kenneth S. Norris: To Carl Leavitt Hubbs, a Modern Pioneer Naturalist on the Occasion of His Eightieth Year . In: Copeia, Vol. 1974, No. 3 (Ed.): Copeia . 1974, No. 3, 1974, ISSN  0045-8511 , pp. 581-594. doi : 10.2307 / 1442670 .
• Elizabeth A. Shor, Richard H. Rosenblatt, John D. Isaacs: Carl Leavitt Hubbs, October 18, 1894 – June 30, 1989 . In: Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences . 56, 1987, ISSN  0077-2933 , pp. 214-226.
• Keir B. Sterling, Richard P. Harmond, George A. Cevasco, Lorne F. Hammond [1997]: Biographical dictionary of American and Canadian naturalists and environmentalists . Greenwood Press, Westport 1997, ISBN 0-313-23047-1 , pp. Xix + 937.

Web links

• Studies in Ichthyology, David Starr Jordan, Carl Leavitt Hubbs, Published by Stanford University, Palo Alto, Ca., 1919