Emmett Reid Dunn

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Emmett Reid Dunn (born November 21, 1894 in Alexandria , Virginia , † February 13, 1956 in Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania ) was an American herpetologist .

Live and act

Emmett Reid Dunn was the son of civil engineer Emmett Clarke and his wife Mary Cassandra (Reid) Dunn. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1915 and a Master of Arts in 1916 from Haverford College , Pennsylvania, he served as an ensign in the US Navy from 1917 to 1918 . In 1919 he was an assistant at the United States National Museum. In 1921 he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He then taught as a professor of zoology at Smith College in Northampton , Massachusetts . From 1924 to 1929 he was editor of the magazine Copeia . In 1928 he gave up his professorship at Smith College and received a Guggenheim Fellowship , with which he conducted research in the American tropics and at European museums. In 1929 he became an associate professor at Haverford College. From 1930 to 1931 he was President of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists . From 1935 to 1956 he held the David Scull Chair in Biology at Haverford College. In 1937 he was a curator for reptiles and amphibians at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. From 1946 to 1956 he was a research fellow at the American Museum of Natural History . He conducted field research for this museum as early as 1916 and 1926. Dunn undertook extensive expeditions that took him to Komodo , Mexico , Panama , Costa Rica , Colombia , Jamaica , Cuba and South America . His main research interests included the salamanders of eastern North America, on which he wrote his best-known work in 1925, " Salamanders of the Family Plethodontidae ". Further publications were " Reptile and Amphibian collections from the North Carolina Mountains: with special Reference to Salamanders " (1917), " The American Caecilians " (1942), " Lower Categories in Herpetology " (1943) and " Contributions to the Herpetology of Colombia , 1943-1946 "(1957). In addition, Dunn wrote over 217 scientific articles for the magazine Copeia and discovered around 40 new reptile and amphibian taxa , including the Panama stumpy foot frog , De Schauensee's anaconda , the black milk snake ( Lampropeltis triangulum gaigae ) and the long-tailed rattlesnake .

Dunn was a member of the American Society of Mammalogists, the Ecological Society of America , the Society for the Study of Evolution , the Reptile Study Society, the Phi Beta Kappa , the Academia Colombiana de Ciencias, the Biological Society of Washington, the Harvard Travelers Club and at The Explorers Club .

literature

  • Karl Patterson Schmidt : Emmett Reid Dunn, 1894-1956 . In: Copeia, Vol. 1957, No. 2 (Jul. 15, 1957), pp. 75-77
  • CC Hoff, AJ Sharp & WG Moore: Resolution of Respect: Emmett Reid Dunn, 1894-1956 In: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep. 1956), pp. 87-88
  • Keir Brooks Sterling: Biographical dictionary of American and Canadian naturalists and environmentalists . Pp. 227-228, ISBN 9780313230479

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Dunn, Emmett Reid
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American herpetologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandria , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1956
Place of death Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania