Henry Bryant Bigelow

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Henry Bryant Bigelow (born October 3, 1879 in Boston , Massachusetts , † December 11, 1967 in Concord , Massachusetts) was an American zoologist. His main research interests were ichthyology and marine biology .

Live and act

Bigelow comes from a wealthy family. His father was a banker in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. In 1895 he attended the Milton Academy and in 1896 he assisted Alpheus Hyatt at the Boston Natural History Museum. Before studying zoology at Harvard University in 1897, he took biology courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . As a student, he took part in 1900 in the Brown-Harvard Expedition to Newfoundland and the Labrador Peninsula , led by Reginald Aldworth Daly (1871-1957) , on which he wrote a paper in 1902 on the avifauna of the northeastern coast of Labrador. In 1901 he received his bachelor's degree from Harvard. In 1904 he graduated from the Master of Arts and in 1906 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the energy metabolism of the jellyfish Gonionemus vertens from the family of olindiidae for Ph.D. In the same year he became an assistant at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and married Elizabeth Perkins Shattuck. This marriage had four children, two of whom died in 1931 and 1934.

Bigelow took part in several marine biology expeditions. In 1901 he accompanied Alexander Agassiz to the Maldives . From 1904 he traveled with the research ship Albatross to the tropical Pacific and the Caribbean, where he collected medusas and state jellyfish. This was the basis for his book The Siphonophorae , published in 1911 , which is one of the standard works on the systematics of the state jellyfish. Between 1911 and 1924 he operated on the advice of the Canadian oceanographer Sir John Murray (1841-1914) studies in the until then largely unexplored Gulf of Maine . His expeditions, on which he published the three monographs Fishes of Gulf of Maine (1925), Physical Oceanography of Gulf of Maine (1926) and Plankton of Gulf of Maine (1927), as well as dozens of scientific articles, were approved by the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ ) and the US Bureau of Fisheries. In 1913 he became a curator for cnidarians at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In the same year he worked as a consultant for the International Ice Patrol and between 1917 and 1919 for the United States Shipping Board. In 1918 he served as a navigator on the US transport ship Amphibion , on which he survived a sea battle with a German submarine. After the war he got a position as a consultant with the United States Coast Guard and in 1921 a teaching position at Harvard University. In 1927 he became an associate professor of zoology at Harvard University and curator of oceanography at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1930 he founded the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , supported by the Rockefeller Foundation . Until 1939 he was president of this institute. In 1931 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and awarded the Agassiz Medal. In the same year he was appointed professor of zoology at Harvard University, where he was the mentor of later famous marine researchers such as Columbus O'Donnell Iselin (1904-1971) and Mary Sears (1905-1997). In 1932 he became a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. From 1939 to 1963 he published together with William Charles Schroeder (1895-1977) the book series Fishes of Western North Atlantic . In 1946, Bigelow retired, but remained on the faculty of the Museum of Comparative Zoology until 1962. In 1947 his book Wind Waves at Sea, Breakers and Surf was published . In 1950 he became professor emeritus at Harvard University.

In 1911 Bigelow was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1931 to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1937 to the American Philosophical Society . He was with the William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1944), the medaljen Schmidt Johannes (1947) of the Carlsberg Foundation , the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1948) and with the commémorative Médaille Prince Albert 1 he de Monaco (1950) from the Institut océanographique de Monaco .

In 1960 the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution donated the Henry Bryant Bigelow Medal. This honors scientists who, according to the statutes, “ carry out significant research on the phenomena of the sea ”. Bigelow was the first to receive this medal. In 2006 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration named one of their research vessels after him.

To those described by Bigelow taxa, several of which were written in collaboration with William C. Schroeder, include the box jellyfish Manokia stiasnyi , the ray species olseni Dipturus , Leucoraja lentiginosa , Fenestraja atripinna , Amblyraja jenseni that Roche genus Pseudoraja that Seekatzengattung Neoharriotta and the Pacific sleeping shark ( Somniosus pacificus ).

Dedication names

Etmopterus bigelowi

As early as 1905, Bigelow was honored by Otto Maas (1867-1916) in the type epithet of the jellyfish taxa Euphysora bigelowi and Corymorpha bigelowi . Other names are Etmopterus bigelowi , Americamysis bigelowi , Bigelowina , Rajella bigelowi and Chilosia bigelowi .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Bryant Bigelow Medal from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bigelow, Henry Bryant
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1967
Place of death Concord , Massachusetts