Philip Pearsall Carpenter

Philip Pearsall Carpenter

Philip Pearsall Carpenter (born November 4, 1819 in Bristol , † May 24, 1877 in Montreal ) was a British Presbyterian , social reformer and conchologist .

Live and act

Philip Pearsall Carpenter was the youngest child of the schoolmaster and Unitarian Lant Carpenter (1780-1840) and his wife Anna († 1856). His siblings included the social reformer and philanthropist Mary Carpenter (1807–1877) and the naturalist and physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter . From 1833 to 1836 he attended Trinity College in Bristol and then until 1840 the Manchester College in York . In 1841 Carpenter graduated from the University of London with a BA. In the same year he became a Presbyterian pastor in State ( Lancashire ). In 1846 Carpenter moved to a parish in Warrington for which he worked until 1861.

In 1855 Carpenter discovered an extensive collection of shells belonging to the recently deceased Belgian naturalist Frederick Reigen at a dealer in Liverpool , which he had gathered in Mazatlán , Mexico . Carpenter acquired the 14 ton raw collection for 50 pounds. In the following years he dealt with the processing of this collection. A first comprehensive article appeared in the report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1856. The catalog published in 1857 contained, among other things, the first description of the subgenus Leiosolenus belonging to the family of mussels (Mytilidae) . Two years later he traveled to the United States to classify the Smithsonian Institution's shell collection .

On October 1, 1860, he married Minna Meyer, who came from Hamburg. With a son adopted in the United States, they settled in Montreal in 1865 . Philip Pearsall Carpenter died of typhoid and left his extensive collection of mussels to McGill College .

Fonts (selection)

• Description of (supposed) new species and varieties of shells, from the Californian and west Mexican coasts, principally in the collection of Hugh Cuming. In: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Part 23, 1855, pp. 228–235 ( online )
• Catalog of the collection of Mazatlan shells in the British Museum. Collected by Frederick Reigen, described by Philip P. Carpenter . 2 volumes, London 1857 ( online ).
• The mollusks of western North America embracing the second report made to the British Association on this subject, with other papers, reprinted by permission, with a general index . Smithsonian miscellaneous collections, Volume 252, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1872 ( online ).
• Russell Lant Carpenter (Ed.): Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall Carpenter: Chiefly Derived from His Letters. 2nd Edition. C. Kegan Paul & Co., London 1880 ( online ). - 1st edition 1879.

literature

• Norman Moore, rev. Yolanda Foote: Carpenter, Philip Pearsall (1819–1877). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 10: Cappe – Chancellor. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861360-1 , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), As of 2004, accessed October 8, 2012.
• Katherine VW Palmer: Carpenter, Philip Pearsall . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).

Web links

• Entry in the Darwin Correspondence Project

Individual evidence

1. ^ Philip P. Carpenter: Catalog of the collection of Mazatlan shells in the British Museum, collected by Frederick Reige . London 1857, pp. 130-131, ( online ).