Doris Mable Cochran
Doris Mable Cochran ( born May 18, 1898 in North Girard, Pennsylvania, † May 22, 1968 in Hyattsville, Maryland) was an American Herpetologin, which for many years as a curator at the American Natural Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC worked.
Life and work
Cochran grew up in Washington, D.C. on, after her father had received a job with the government. During her studies at George Washington University, where she graduated in 1920 as Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science in 1921, she worked for the War Department of the United States and as an assistant in the Department of Herpetology at the United States National Museum. As an employee of the curator Leonhard Hess Stejneger she was responsible for managing the herpetological collections. In 1927, she was assistant curator in 1942 curator. In 1933 she graduated with a thesis on the muscular system of the blue crab from the University of Maryland to the Ph.D. In 1956 she became the first curator at the Smithsonian Institution, and held this position until her retirement in May 1968.
Cochran studied art at the Corcoran Art School, where she developed into a talented animal illustrator. She made drawings not only for their own books, but also for the works of some of her colleagues.
Cochran's research focus was the herpetofauna of the West Indies and South America, particularly Brazil and Colombia. Between 1922 and 1968 she published 90 scientific articles in which she described 6 new species, including Niceforonia, Wetmorena, Darlingtonia and Crossodactylodes and over 100 taxa of anurans. For the military, she wrote next to books for the detection of poisonous reptiles. Their twenty years of research in the West Indies in 1941, she described in her book, The Herpetology of Hispaniola. In 1961 she published her best-known book "Living Amphibians of the World", which translated into six languages and in Germany in 1970 under the title " Knaurs animal kingdom in colors - Amphibians " Earthscan was released by the publisher.
Ehrentaxa
The Doris Mable Cochran named after genera and species include Cochranella (1951 by Edward Harrison Taylor), Aplastodiscus cochranae (1952 by Robert Mertens ) cochranae, Aristelliger (1931 by Chapman Grant) (1932 by Chapman Grant) cochranae, Eleutherodactylus cochranae and Nymphargus ( in 1961 by Coleman Jett Goin ).