G. Arthur Cooper

Gustav Arthur Cooper (born February 9, 1902 , † October 17, 2000 ) was an American paleontologist who was internationally recognized as an authority on brachiopods , their taxonomy and their use in stratigraphy .

Cooper began collecting insects and minerals as a teenager in New York . He studied at Colgate University and Yale University , where he received his doctorate on brachiopods under Charles Schuchert in 1929 and was an assistant curator at the Peabody Museum . In 1930 he became Assistant Curator at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC , in 1944 curator of paleontology of invertebrates, in 1956 head of the geology department and in 1963 head of the newly established paleobiology department. After retiring in 1974, he continued to work at the Smithsonian until 1987. In retirement he lived in Raleigh, North Carolina .

He built the world's largest collection of brachiopods at the Smithsonian. Among other things, he collected extensively in the Glass Mountains in Texas ( Permian brachiopods ), 370 km southeast of El Paso . Cooper used acids to remove the fossils petrified in silica from the limestone. He described the brachiopods in several volumes with RE Grant.

He was on the Stratigraphy Committee of the National Research Council for the Devonian . He was also on the Ordovician and Permian Committees.

In 1960 Cooper was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1964 he received the Paleontological Society Medal and was President of the Paleontological Society. In 1979 he received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal , and in 1983 the Penrose Medal .

He worked at the Smithsonian with his wife Josephine Cooper.

Fonts

with Charles Schuchert: Brachiopod Genera of the suborders Orthoidea and Pentameroidea, Memoirs Peabody Museum, 1932 (digitized version )

with EO Ulrich: Ozarkian and Canadian Brachiopoda, 1938

Chazyan and Related Brachiopods, 1956

with Helen Margaret Muir-Wood : Morphology, Classification, and Life Habits of Productoids (Brachiopoda), 1960

with Richard E. Grant: Permian Brachiopods of West Texas, 6 volumes, 1969–1977

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Cooper, G. Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Cooper, Gustav Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH	February 9, 1902
DATE OF DEATH	October 17, 2000