Karl F. Koopman

Karl Friedrich Koopman (born April 1, 1920 in Honolulu , Hawaii , † September 22, 1997 in Manhattan , New York City , New York ), often Karl Koopman or Karl F. Koopman , was an American mammaloge. The bats were a research focus .

Life

Karl Koopman was the son of Karl H. Koopman and Mary Koopman, nee Brown. His father was a librarian. When Koopman was two years old, the family moved to Los Angeles, where he attended elementary school with his younger sister. Koopman's lifelong interest in zoology was sparked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, which he frequented as a child. In the early 1930s, the family moved to New York City after Koopman's father was offered a job on the faculty at Bard College in Red Hook . Koopman graduated from high school in New York City and later in South Carolina for several years while his father was a librarian at The Citadel military college .

After graduating from high school, Koopman began studying chemistry at Columbia University . However, seminars in evolution and paleontology prompted him to switch to zoology. In 1943 Koopman obtained a Bachelor of Science and in 1945 a Master of Science. During his student days Koopman worked with the population geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky on a series of experiments with fruit flies . In 1950 he was with the dissertation Natural selection for reproductive isolation between Drosophila pseudoobscura and Drosophila persimilis for Ph.D. PhD. In the same year an abbreviated version of the dissertation was published in the journal Evolution , which is considered Koopman's first scientific publication.

After completing his studies, Koopman taught from 1949 to 1950 at Middletown Collegiate Center and then taught for six years as an instructor in biology at Queens College. From 1958 to 1961 he worked as assistant curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. In 1961, he became assistant curator in the mammals division of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, associate curator in 1966 and curator in 1978. In 1985 he retired as a curator emeritus.

Dedication names and awards

The mouse-like rodents Chiropodomys karlkoopmani , Monticolomys koopmani and Rattus koopmani are named after Koopman . The bat species Sturnira koopmanhilli from Ecuador is named after Karl Koopman and John Edwards Hill . In 1977 he received the Gerrit S. Miller Award from the North American Symposium on Bat Research for his services to bat research. In 1988 he received the Hartley T. Jackson Award from the American Society of Mammalogists . In 1990 he was elected an honorary member of the American Society of Mammalogists.

literature

• David Klingener, Thomas A. Griffiths: Contributions to Mammalogy in Honor of Karl F. Koopman. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, No 206, 1991, ISBN 978-9-99224-307-7
• Elmer C. Birney, Jerry R. Choate: Seventy-five years of mammalogy, 1919-1994 , Special Publication No. II The American Society of Mammalogists, 1994, p. 97
• Eric Pace: Dr. Karl F. Koopman, 77, An Authority on Bats, Is Dead. The New York Times, September 30, 1997
• Merlin Tuttle: In Tribute: Karl F. Koopman 1920-1997. Bat Conservation International, Volume 15, Issue 4, Winter 1997
• Diane Ackerman: The Lives They Lived: Karl F. Koopman; Batman. The New York Times, January 4, 1998
• Thomas A. Griffiths: Karl F. Koopman: 1920–1997. Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 79, No. August 3, 1998
• Ann T. Kelne: Koopman, Karl Friedrich In: Paul F. Betz, Paul R. Betz, Mark Christopher Carnes (Eds.): American National Biography: Supplement 1 , 2002, ISBN 978-0-19515-063-6 , p 325-326
• Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson: The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals , JHU Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-80189-304-9 , p. 228