Dirk Albert Hooijer

Dirk Albert Hooijer (* May 30, 1919 in Medan, Sumatra, † November 26, 1993 in Leiden, The Netherlands), more commonly known only by its author abbreviation DA Hooijer, was a Dutch paleontologist.

Life and work

Hooijer spent his youth in Bogor on Java. 1932 the family moved to The Hague, where he made his 1937 high school graduation from the Dalton The Hague. He then studied geology at the University of Leiden. In 1941 he was hired at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke History in Leiden, where the main focus of his research was mainly fossil hippos and rhinos. In 1946 he was curator for the collection of Eugène Dubois ( 1858-1940 ). In the same year he received his doctorate with a thesis on Prehistoric and fossil rhinoceroses from the Malay Archipelago and India under Professor Hilbrand Boschma (1893-1976) to the doctor. From 1950 to 1951 he was a Rockefeller Fellowship Assistant at the American Museum of Natural History. From 1970 until his retirement in 1979 he was a professor at the University of California at Irvine.

Hooijer authored 267 scientific articles on vertebrate fossils from Indonesia, Africa, the Middle East (including Israel), the Netherlands, the West Indies and South America. Many of these works deal with fossil rhinos, cats, pigs, rodents, primates, and proboscidean. He described six new genera, including Celebochoerus, Chilotheridium, Epileptobos, Paradiceros, Paulocnus and Spelaeomys and 47 new species and subspecies, including the extinct Hirscheberart Babyrousa bolabatuensis.

Hooijer was married and had two daughters and a son.