Wilfred Hudson Osgood

Wilfred Hudson Osgood, photo from 1897

Wilfred Hudson Osgood (born December 8, 1875 in Rochester , New Hampshire , † June 20, 1947 in Chicago , Illinois ) was an American zoologist.

Life

Osgood was the son of a watchmaker. After studying biology, he graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1899 . From 1897 to 1909 Osgood worked in the United States Department of Agriculture , where Clinton Hart Merriam (1855-1942), then head of the Bureau of Biological Survey, exerted a great influence on him. Osgood conducted research in Alaska between 1899 and 1909. In 1909 he got a job at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where he was curator of the departments for birds and mammals until 1921. In 1921 he replaced Charles Barney Cory as curator of the zoological department, a position he held until 1940. In 1918 he graduated with the published 1921 PhD Monographic Study of the American Marsupial Caenolestes for Ph.D.

In addition to his research in Alaska and the United States, Osgood led many collecting expeditions for the Field Museum, which took him to Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia and Indochina, among others. Together with Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874–1927) he toured the Abyssinian Empire between 1926 and 1927 and in 1939 he accompanied a Swedish expedition to the Strait of Magellan . In 1906, 1910 and 1930 he visited several European museums to study the collections there.

Osgood is the author of the publications: Revision of Pocket Mice (1900), Revision of Genus of Mice "Peromyscus" (1909), Alaska Biological Invertigations and Yukon (1909), Fur Seals of Pribilof Islands (1915), The Mammals of Asiatic Expeditions (1932), Artist and Naturalist in Ethiopia (1936) (in collaboration with Fuertes), The Mammals of Chile (1943) and about 180 scientific papers on the systematics, anatomy and behavior of birds and mammals.

Memberships

Osgood was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Ornithologists' Union, and he was the founder and first president of the Cooper Ornithology Club in California. In addition, from 1900 to 1909 he was secretary at the Biological Society of Washington , trustee at the Chicago Zoological Society and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London and the British Ornithologists' Union . From 1924 to 1926 he was President of the American Society of Mammalogists.

Dedication names

After Wilfred Hudson Osgood among others are Schwarztinamu ( Tinamus osgoodi ), the Vietnamese rat Rattus osgoodi , Osgood's short-tailed opossum ( Monodelphis osgoodi ) Altiphrynoides osgoodi , Osgood's Horseshoe Bat ( Rhinolophus osgoodi ), the Michoacan deer mouse ( Osgoodomys banderanus ) and Osgood's leaf-eared mouse named.

literature

• Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson: The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals . JHU Press, 2009, ISBN 9780801893049 : p. 301
• Karl Patterson Schmidt (1950): Wilfred Hudson Osgood, 1875-1947 . The Auk, 67: pp. 183-189.