Charles Wallace Richmond

Charles Wallace Richmond (born December 31, 1868 in Kenosha , Wisconsin , † May 19, 1932 in Washington, DC ) was an American ornithologist . After a few research trips, he turned away from field ornithology, occupied himself primarily with bibliographic research and nomenclature and became an internationally renowned specialist in this field. The Richmond Index , an extensive index of the genera and species of birds, with which Richmond contributed significantly to the uniformity and stability of the ornithological nomenclature , achieved some fame among experts .

Life

Origin, Education and Marriage

Charles Wallace Richmond was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to former rail mail clerk Edward Leslie Richmond and his wife Josephine Ellen Richmond (née Henry). He had a brother and two sisters. In 1880 his mother died and the father moved to Washington, DC, where he accepted a position in the government printing company and married a second time. The stepmother, also widowed, brought two other children into the marriage. She later had five sons, two of whom died in childhood.

Richmond's education was limited to a few years in public schools. In addition, he had to look after the siblings and raise part of the family support. In the winter months he therefore worked as a page in the House of Representatives . However, through diligent rework, he was able to be promoted to the next higher class every year. In 1883 he had to drop out of school and worked as a courier for the United States Geological Survey until 1889 . He then worked for a short time at the Census Office . He took Latin lessons temporarily, which his father soon stopped because of the costs. He then pursued further studies on his own with the help of books. From 1894 he studied medicine at Georgetown University , finally relieved of family responsibilities . He graduated in 1897 but never practiced. The following year he married Louise H. Seville. The marriage remained childless.

Ornithological career

As a child, Richmond had been interested in birds and their eggs, of which he had made a modest collection. In Washington he had visited the exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History and made the child's decision to donate his own collection. He came into contact with Robert Ridgway , who became a role model and teacher for him. While working in the House of Representatives, he had come across George Robert Gray's Hand List of the Genera and Species of Birds in the Library of Congress, along with other ornithological books . He had started to copy the species list contained therein, but gave up this work after the first volume.

In 1884 he had begun collecting bellows and made the acquaintance of Henry W. Henshaw , whose specialist knowledge he used to use for determination. This in turn introduced him to William Brewster , who gave him his first knowledge of taxidermy , in which Richmond brought it to great skill in the next few years. From 1885 Richmond brought out his first scientific publications, including a list of breeding birds of the District of Columbia , which appeared in 1888 in The Auk .

From the beginning of August to the end of September 1888, an expedition of the Geological Survey took him to Montana , where he collected numerous birds. Together with the botanist Frank Hall Knowlton , who also participated , he later wrote a report on it. Until 1892 he held a position as ornithologist in the agricultural department of the Geological Survey . In the same year he joined an expedition to Honduras . On the way there he was able to collect birds in Jamaica and Nicaragua , but where the expedition failed prematurely in Bluefields . Several participants had malaria and one died. A year later, Richmond returned via New York . He sold the collected birds to the museum in Washington and thus financed his studies.

From 1893 he was temporarily employed at the National Museum of Natural History as a night watchman in the switchboard, then was soon assigned to the department of mammalogy and in July 1894 research assistant under Robert Ridgway. Richmond took on the duties of curator in the ornithological department for him while working on the monumental work Birds of North and Middle America . In 1900 he went on an extensive collecting trip to Puerto Rico with Leonhard Hess Stejneger , which, according to a letter, he found quite arduous. In addition to the travel conditions and a disease of dengue fever , he complains that due to the large-scale deforestation, the biodiversity of birds left a lot to be desired and that collecting rare species in the remote regions is very difficult. He did not undertake any further research trips.

In 1901 he coordinated the museum's exhibitions at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition in Charleston . He was also involved in the evaluation of William Louis Abbott's extensive collections from Africa and Madagascar , Kashmir , Turkestan and Sumatra and supported Ridgway in the work on The Birds of North and Middle America .

Richmond's interest subsequently focused heavily on bibliographical work and research, as well as on issues of nomenclature, in which he acquired a profound specialist knowledge that was valued internationally. He published only a little himself, but had a considerable influence on the research work of other ornithologists and received many papers for examination.

After Ridgway's death, Richmond became curator of the ornithological department on July 1, 1929. However, since 1922 he had had a stomach ulcer and he had grown tired of the daily work at the museum. He was therefore happy that he was able to hand over the curatorial post to Herbert Friedmann in September . He returned to his old post as Associate Curator and spent most of his time reviewing academic papers and providing technical advice. His health deteriorated continuously until he died on May 19, 1932 in Georgetown Hospital.

Richmond was an elected member of the American Ornithologists' Union since 1888, was a fellow since 1897, and became a member of the board in 1903. In 1901 he was elected to the newly formed Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North American Birds , as its secretary he served several times until 1922. He was involved in the creation of the third and fourth editions of the AOU Checklist . However, he declined a nomination as Vice President and later as President. He was also a member of the Baird Ornithological Club and was honored by numerous national and international scientific organizations with honorary memberships.

The "Richmond Index"

In his spare time, Richmond cataloged all available information on the initial descriptions of genera and species of both recent and extinct birds in a file that later became known as the Richmond Index , making Richmond the leading international expert in the field of ornithological nomenclature.

Between 1889 and 1891 he had started to create index cards on which he recorded the publication with the date of publication, the exact spelling, type location and type as well as a citation of the first description. Often times, the cards also included etymological notes or notes from Richmond's verifying research. During his trip to Central America he had given the file to Ridgway, who had scattered it among his files. Richmond later kept them at home. In the dining room of his private apartment he tirelessly and systematically evaluated ornithological publications, made notes and transcribed the information on cards. With the help of a small printing press, he was also able to create small series, with which he avoided paperwork with redundant publication data. During the sometimes monotonous work he listened to music with a phonograph or talked to visitors.

In 1912 the index had grown to 30,000 cards and another 10,000 with supporting information. According to Richmond, his work was about three-fifths completed. The plan arose to publish parts of the card index as a reprint and to make it accessible to research institutions or private individuals by subscription . In The Auk , ornithologist Witmer Stone , who was a friend of Richmond, described the project and at the same time paid tribute to its importance. While North American ornithologists, for example, were able to rely on a long tradition of standard works and had a nomenclaturally reliable list of species in the checklist of the American Ornithologists' Union, research in the South American, South Asian and African bird life suffered from uniformity and species knowledge. Many species had been described several times and the exact publication date and thus the priority for many synonymous taxa were unclear. In addition, the necessary knowledge was scattered over the entire literature and hardly any library had an almost complete collection of ornithological specialist publications. During the work, Richmond had already brought many forgotten initial descriptions to light, discovered numerous contradictions and conflicts and had been able to resolve some of them.

The project of the publication came to nothing. In 1916, Richmond had only produced 267 cards in the intended edition and was already having increasing problems with storage. In the meantime, a German research society proposed to publish at least an up-to-date and complete list of all bird species. Richmond had previously published some supplements to the Index Generum Avium , created by Frederick Herschel Waterhouse in 1889, and got to work immediately. However, the company failed when the First World War broke out . Up until 1927, Richmond had published a number of smaller publications on nomenclature based on the catalog, but for a long time only a few experts had access to its full potential.

After Richmond's death in 1932, work on the Richmond Index was continued until at least 1990 and occasionally thereafter. A microfiche edition appeared in 1992 as The Richmond Index to the Genera and Species of Birds . The catalog is still an important source for nomenclature and scientific history questions today. The index cards are now available as digital copies on the Internet.

literature

• Witmer Stone: In memoriam: Charles Wallace Richmond 1868–1932 , The Auk Vol. 50 (1933), pp. 1–22, ( PDF )
• Notes and News , The Auk Vol. 24 (1912), p. 279 ( PDF )

Web links

• Zoonomes - Zoological Nomenclature Resource, with the digitized Richmond Index (under construction), accessed January 3, 2013
• The Richmond Index to the Genera and Species of Birds , introduction to the publication of the Richmond Index on microfiche (1992), accessed January 3, 2013

Individual evidence

Unless otherwise stated, the information in the article comes from Witmer Stone's obituary (see literature).

1. ↑ Introduction to zoonomes , accessed on January 3, 2013