Frederic Ward Putnam
Frederic Ward Putnam (born April 16, 1839 in Salem , Massachusetts , † August 14, 1915 in Cambridge , Massachusetts) was an American zoologist , anthropologist , ethnologist and archaeologist and is considered a pioneer of American archeology.
Life
His father Ebenezer was a merchant who later turned to botany and became an influential figure in Salem. Frederic Putnam became interested in natural history as a teenager and became a bird curator at the Essex Institute in Salem in 1856 and published a list of birds in Essex County that same year . He was then sponsored by Louis Agassiz , with whom he studied at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University and at the Museum of Comparative Zoology . In 1862 he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree and in 1867 joined forces with fellow students Edward Sylvester Morse , Alpheus Spring Packard and Alpheus Hyatt to found the magazine American Naturalist . As early as 1865 he founded the Naturalist's Directory . Like other former students of Agassiz, he did not follow his 1860 publicized rejection of the evolution theory of Charles Darwin .
In 1864 he became the curator of vertebrates at the Essex Institute in Salem and was its director until 1870. From 1869 to 1873 he was the first director of the Peabody Museum in Salem and from 1867 to 1869 he was also overseer of the museum of the East Indian Marine Society in Salem.
In 1874 he became an assistant at the Kentucky Geological Survey, from 1876 to 1878 he was curator for fossil fish at Harvard as the successor to Louis Agassiz, who died in 1873, and from 1876 to 1879 also assistant to the United States Engineers in the survey of the West (Survey West of the 100th Meridian) .
He turned increasingly away from zoology and Indian archeology and in 1875 became director of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University with an associated professorship. He remained director until 1913 and was then an honorary curator. He led many excavations, for example in Ohio and New Jersey , but also in many other areas of the USA. Among other things, he was involved in the maintenance of the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio. In 1893 he was the curator for anthropology at the World's Fair in Chicago and was the driving force behind the establishment of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which was to give the exhibits a permanent museum. His hope of becoming director of the Field Museum was not fulfilled, but he became curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1894 to 1903 . He then organized an anthropological department at the Museum of the University of California at the invitation of Phoebe Hearst , where he was professor and curator until 1909.
In 1898 he became president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , 1901 of the American Folklore Society, and 1905 of the American Anthropological Association . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, since 1910, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .
literature
- David L. Browman, Stephen Williams: Anthropology at Harvard. A biographical history . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mas. 2013
- RW Dexter: The impact of Evolutionary Theories on the Salem Group of Agassiz zoologists (Morse, Hyatt, Packard, Putnam) . In: Essex Institute historical collections , Volume 115, 1979, pp. 144-171
Web links
- Alfred Tozzer, Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences (PDF; 1.6 MB; English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed March 31, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Putnam, Frederic Ward |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American anthropologist, zoologist, and archaeologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 16, 1839 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Salem , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 14, 1915 |
| Place of death | Cambridge , Massachusetts |