Karl Patterson Schmidt

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Karl Patterson Schmidt (bottom right) and his family (Christmas 1950)

Karl Patterson Schmidt (born June 19, 1890 in Lake Forest , Illinois , † September 26, 1957 in Chicago ) was an American herpetologist .

Life

Karl Patterson Schmidt was born the son of German-born Professor George W. Schmidt and his wife Margaret Patterson Schmidt in Lake Forest, Illinois. Schmidt's father was a teacher in Lake Forest before the family moved to Wisconsin in 1907. They lived on a farm near Stanley , where Schmidt's mother and younger brother Franklin JW Schmidt, who had made a name for himself in wildlife management, were killed in a fire on August 7, 1935.

From 1913 to 1916 Karl Patterson Schmidt completed a biology and geology degree at Cornell University , which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1915 he developed his love for herpetology during a four-month training course at the Perdee Oil Company in Louisiana . In 1916 he undertook his first geological expedition to the province of Santo Domingo in the south of the Dominican Republic .

From 1916 to 1922 he worked as a research assistant under the herpetologists Gladwyn Kingsley Noble and Mary Cynthia Dickerson in the department of herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1922 he became assistant curator for reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. From 1922 to 1934 he undertook several herpetological expeditions to Central America , South America and the Caribbean , including in 1922 to Puerto Rico , 1923 to Honduras , 1926 to Brazil and from 1933 to 1934 to Guatemala . From 1937 to 1949 he was editor of the herpetological and ichthyological journal Copeia . In 1938 he served in the US Army . In 1941 he was appointed chief curator at the Field Museum, which he held until his retirement in 1955. In 1951 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1956 to the National Academy of Sciences .

In 1957, Karl Patterson Schmidt died of a bite from a young Boomslang sent to him by Marlin Perkins (who was the director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago at the time ) to be examined in his laboratory at the Field Museum in Chicago. From the time of the bite on the afternoon of September 25th until his death, he kept a record describing the progress of his poisoning. The last entry in the record is dated the morning of September 26th; Around 2 p.m. Karl P. Schmidt fell into a coma and died at 3:15 p.m. on September 26, 1957.

Schmidt was one of the most outstanding herpetologists of the 20th century. Although he discovered only a few species himself, he wrote the first scientific descriptions of over 200 taxa (including 69 species of reptiles). He wrote over 200 articles and books, including Living Reptiles of the World (German: Knaurs Tierreich in Farben Reptilien ), which became his most successful book internationally.

Dedication names

The following taxa are named after Karl Patterson Schmidt: Amphisbaena schmidti , Anolis schmidti , Urosaurus ornatus schmidti , Typhlops schmidti , Batrachuperus karlschmidti and Eleutherodactylus karlschmidti .

Works (selection)

  • Homes and Habits of Wild Animals (1934).
  • Our Friendly Animals and When They Came (1938).
  • Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada with Delbert Dwight Davis . (1941).
  • Principles of Animal Ecology with Warder Clyde Allee and Alfred Edwards Emerson (1949).
  • A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles (1953).
  • Living Reptiles of the World with Robert Frederick Inger (1957). (German: Knaurs Tierreich in Farben: Reptilien, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Munich / Zurich, 1969.)

literature

  • A History of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History by Charles W. Myers PDF full text
  • Karl Patterson Schmidt - Anniversary Volume. In Honor of His Sixty-fifth Birthday . In: Fieldiana: Zoology Volume 37. Chicago Natural History Museum. 1955. ( online version )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aldo Leopold: Franklin JW Schmidt (obituary) In: The Wilson Bulletin-September, 1936. ( PDF full text )
  2. ^ A History of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History by Charles W. Myers PDF full text
  3. ^ Kraig Adler (1989). Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Society for the study of amphibians and reptiles ISBN 0-916984-19-2
  4. ↑ Report of the Virginia Herpetological Society, No. 21, issue 9/10, 1960.
  5. ↑ Peter Uetz: The original descriptions of reptiles, Zootaxa, No. 2335, 2010, 59-68, pdf

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Karl Patterson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American herpetologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Lake Forest , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1957
Place of death Chicago