William Healey Dall

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William Healey Dall

William Healey Dall (born August 21, 1845 in Boston , † March 27, 1927 ) was an American naturalist , malacologist and paleontologist and was one of the first to scientifically research and discover inner Alaska . He described many of the molluscs of the Pacific Northwest and became a recognized expert on living and fossil molluscs and brachiopods .

Dall also made a significant scientific contribution as an anthropologist for the indigenous people of Alaska .

biography

Early years

Dall was born in Boston . His father, Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816–1886), a Unitarian lay preacher, went to India in 1855 as a missionary . He left the family in Massachusetts . His mother, Caroline Wells Healey Dall , worked there as a teacher, wrote children's books in the following years and was also a transcendentalist and pioneer of the early American women's movement .

During one of his rare and brief visits to his home, his father introduced William in 1862 to some naturalists at Harvard University , where he himself had studied. A year later, in 1863, William graduated from high school and enrolled at Harvard that year. There he quickly became a student and collaborator of Louis Agassiz , who had only shortly before, in 1859, founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology . Agassiz sparked Dall's interest in malacology, a research area in zoology that was still in its infancy at the time. In addition, Dall studied medicine and anatomy with Jeffries Wyman and Daniel Brainerd .

First research and expeditions

Dall took a job in Chicago . At the Chicago Academy of Science he met Robert Kennicott , who worked at the museum there. In 1865, the Western Union Telegraph Expedition set out to find a possible communications route between North America and Russia across the Bering Sea . Kennicott, who led this expedition as the scientific director, also selected William H. Dall as his assistant because of his expertise in invertebrate and fish. On board the Nightingale , which was under the command of whaler and naturalist Charles Melville Scammon , Dall explored the coast of Siberia, where he also anchored several times in Alaska , which was then still part of Russia .

In 1866, Dall continued this expedition. While staying in the small town of St. Michael, he learned that Kennicott had died of a heart attack on May 13, 1866 while sighting a possible telegraph route along the Yukon River . Dall, determined to complete Kennicott's work, stayed in the Yukon until the beginning of winter. Although the expedition was officially declared over, he continued it until the spring of 1868 at his own expense. In the meantime, the American government had bought Alaska from Russia, which was a great stroke of luck for Dall, because it enabled him to work as a surveyor and at the same time to research the as yet undiscovered flora and fauna .

Back at the Smithsonian Institute , he began sifting through and cataloging the thousands of samples he had collected during the expedition. In 1870 he published a report of his pioneering travels with Alaska and Its Resources , in which he described the Yukon Territory, the geography and resources of Alaska and its people. Also in 1870, Dall became deputy project manager for the US Coast Survey.

Between 1871 and 1874, Dall made several explorations in Alaska. Officially, he was supposed to examine the coast of Alaska, but he also regularly used the opportunities presented to him to collect a large number of samples. In 1871/72 he inspected the Aleutian Islands .

He sent the molluscs , echinoderms and fossils he had collected to Louis Agassiz at the Museum of Comparative Zoology ; Plants went to Asa Gray at Harvard and he sent archaeological and ethnological material to the Smithsonian . In 1877/78 he led an expedition started by Major GM Blake along the east coast of the United States . In 1879 he researched again, this time accompanied by John Muir , among others . At Mount McKinley , Dall watched white sheep roaming about; this species was later named Dall sheep in his honor. He published his findings at Mount McKinley in Meteorology and Bibliography of Alaska .

1880 and after

In 1880, Dall married Annette Whitney. The two spent their honeymoon in Alaska. After arriving in Sitka , his wife traveled back to Washington. Dall started his last scouting expedition on board the schooner Yukon . He was accompanied by ichthyologist Tarleton Hoffman Bean , among others .

Four years later, in 1884, Dall, who had already written more than 400 papers, left the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and started working as a paleontologist at the newly founded United States Geological Survey a year later , which he remained until 1925. He became Honorary Curator for Mollusks US National Museum (Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC) in 1880 . He was to hold this position until his death. He was also an honorary curator for molluscs at the Bishop Museum.

He placed the orders of mussels in 1889 Nuculida , Solemyida and Trigoniida and the subordination, today order Carditida and the superiority of Anomalodesmata (see Nomenclature of mussels ).

In 1899, Dall took part in the Harriman-Alaska expedition to the coasts of Alaska organized by the industrialist Edward Henry Harriman . During this expedition, a large number of new genera and species were scientifically described for the first time. He participated in the Florida Survey in 1891 and the Georgia Survey in 1893 and was in Hawaii in 1899.

Memberships and honors

Dall was a co-founder of the National Geographic Society and the Philosophical Society of Washington . In 1897 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society , and in 1912 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1923 he was Vice President of the Malacological Society of London and in 1888 President of the Biological Society of Washington. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences. He received honorary doctorates from George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania (1904).

The Dall River and Dall Island in Alaska are named after him.

Taxa named after him

Brachiopods
Molluscs
Mammals

Publications (excerpt)

William Healey Dall published mostly shorter treatises and essays around 1600. However, he also wrote some monographs .

  • Alaska and its Resources . 1870
  • A monograph of West American pyramidellid mollusks . 1909
  • Contributions to the tertiary fauna of Florida , 6 volumes, 1890-1903
  • A monograph of the molluscan fauna of the Orthaulax pugnax zone of the Oligocene of Tampa, Florida . 1915

literature

  • RT Abbott, ME Young (Editor): American Malacologists: A national register of professional and amateur malacologists and private shell collectors and biographies of early American mollusk workers born between 1618 and 1900, Consolidated / Drake Press, Philadelphia 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: William H. Dall. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 4, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Dall, William Healey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American naturalist, paleontologist, malacologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1927