G. Arthur Cooper
Gustav Arthur Cooper ( * February 9, 1902, † 17 October 2000 ) was an American paleontologist who internationally as an authority for brachiopods, their taxonomy, and their use in stratigraphy was necessary.
Cooper collected as a teenager in New York insects and minerals. He graduated from Colgate University and Yale University, where he received his doctorate in 1929 at Charles Schuchert on brachiopods and was assistant curator at the Peabody Museum. In 1930 he became an assistant curator at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, 1944, curator of invertebrate paleontology, 1956 Head of the Department of Geology and in 1963 head of the newly founded Paleobiology Department. Even after his retirement in 1974 he worked until 1987 continued at the Smithsonian. In retirement he lived in Raleigh ( North Carolina).
He built at the Smithsonian to the world's largest collection of brachiopods. He collected extensively inter alia in the Glass Mountains in Texas ( Permian brachiopods ), 370 km south-east of El Paso. The petrified fossils in silica dissolved Cooper with acids from the limestone. He described the brachiopods in several volumes with RE Grant.
He stood before the Stratigraphy Committee of the National Research Council for Devon. He was also in the Committee for the Ordovician and Permian.
In 1964 he received the Paleontological Society Medal and was president of the Paleontological Society. In 1983 he received the Penrose Medal.
He worked at the Smithsonian with his wife Josephine Cooper together.
Writings
- With Charles Schuchert: Brachiopod genera of the suborders Ortho Idea and Pentameroidea, Memoirs Peabody Museum, 1932
- EO Ulrich: Ozarkian and Canadian Brachiopoda, 1938
- Chazyan and Related Brachiopods, 1956
- Helen Margaret Muir -Wood: Morphology, Classification, and Life Habits of Productoids ( Brachiopoda ), 1960
- With Richard E. Grant: Permian brachiopods of West Texas, 6 volumes, 1969-1977