Nathaniel E. Atwood

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nathaniel E. Atwood

Nathaniel Ellis Atwood (born September 13, 1807 in Provincetown , Massachusetts , † November 7, 1886 there ) was an American fisherman, businessman, non-academic ichthyologist and politician.

Atwood was the son of a poor fisherman. Nathaniel Atwood began helping his father fish at the age of nine, worked like an adult at age 13, and as a young man commanded a schooner. Soon he switched to coastal trading and commanded a brig that sailed to the West Indies . He later started fishing again until he was almost 60 when he switched to the production of cod liver oil .

Without substantial schooling or even academic training, Atwood observed the behavior and idiosyncrasies of fish early on and tried to read about them as much as possible. He made his knowledge available to David Humphreys Storer when he wrote his report on the fish world of Massachusetts in 1843. Atwood had a lifelong friendship with Louis Agassiz from 1852 onwards. During his membership in the Massachusetts General Court , Atwood was on a commission with Henry Wheatland and a Judge Chapman reporting on artificial fish reproduction. Atwood himself succeeded in artificial insemination of trout eggs, although the animals died before hatching.

In 1868 Atwood gave a number of well-attended lectures on ichthyology at the Lowell Institute , an educational institution in Boston , Massachusetts. Also in 1868 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1869, 1870, and 1871 Atwood was a member of the Massachusetts Senate . Here he gave important speeches on deep sea fishing and its endangerment. Atwood was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History (since 1847), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Essex Institute .

Web links

literature

  • Nathaniel Ellis Atwood. In: Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , Volume 22, pp. 522-523 ( online )
  • FW Putnam : Obituary of NE Atwood, 1886. In: Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History , Volume 23, pp. 337-338 ( online )
  • GB Goode (Ed.): Fisheries and Fishery Industry of the United States. Part 4, 1887, pp. 149–168 ( PDF, 9.2 MB )

Individual evidence

  1. Book of Members 1780 – present (PDF, 1.1 MB) at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org); Retrieved July 8, 2017.