William Healey Dall
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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 have the interior of Alaska scientifically researched and discovered. He described many mollusks of the Pacific Northwest of the United States and became an acknowledged expert on living and fossil molluscs.
Dall also made a significant scientific contribution in addition, as an anthropologist of Alaska Natives.
Biography
Early years
Dall was born in Boston. His father Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816-1886), a Unitarian lay preacher, went in 1855 as a missionary to India. The family he left behind in Massachusetts. His mother, Caroline Wells Healey Dall worked there as a teacher, wrote in the aftermath children's books and was also a Transzendentalistin and pioneer of the early American women's movement.
During one of the rare and brief visits home, his father William brought in 1862 with some naturalists at Harvard University, where he himself had studied in contact. A year later, in 1863, graduated from William the high school and enrolled in the same year in a Harvard. There he quickly became a pupil and colleague Louis Agassiz, who had only recently been founded in 1859, the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Agassiz woke Dall 's interest in the Malacology, a research field of zoology, which was still at that time in its infancy. In addition, Dall studied medicine and anatomy at Jeffries Wyman and Daniel Brainerd.
Initial research and expeditions
Dall took a job in Chicago. At the Chicago Academy of Science, he met Robert Kennicott know who worked at the museum. In 1865, the Western Union Telegraph Expedition launched to find a possible communication route between North America and Russia on the Bering Sea. Kennicott, who led this expedition as a scientific director, chose for his professional skills in the field of invertebrates and fish also William H. Dall as his assistant. On board the Nightingale, which was under the command of the whaler and naturalist Charles Melville Scammon, Dall explored the coast of Siberia, where he dropped anchor a few times in the then part of Russia yet to Alaska.
1866 Dall put this expedition continued. During a stay in the small village of St. Michael, he learned that Kennicott, while the sighting of a possible telegraph route along the Yukon River had died on 13 May 1866 of a heart attack. Dall, who was determined to complete the work Kennicott 's remained until the beginning of winter on the Yukon. Although the expedition was officially declared over, he put them to the spring of 1868 continued at his own expense. In the meantime, the U.S. government had bought Alaska from Russia, which was a great stroke of luck for Dall, for so he could work as a surveyor and simultaneously explore the undiscovered flora and fauna.
Back at the Smithsonian Institute, he began the thousands of samples he had collected during the expedition to sift and catalog. In 1870 he published with Alaska and Its Resources a report of his pioneering travels, in which he described the Yukon Territory, the geography and resources of Alaska and its inhabitants. Also in 1870 Dall became deputy project manager of the U.S. Coast Survey.
Between 1871 and 1874, Dall stopped several times to explorations on in Alaska. Officially, he should examine the coast of Alaska, he took advantage of the opportunities available to him but also regularly to collect a variety of samples. 1871/72 he inspected the Aleutian Islands.
Collected by him molluscs, echinoderms and fossils he sent to Louis Agassiz to the Museum of Comparative Zoology; Plants went to Asa Gray at Harvard, and he sent archaeological and ethnological material to the Smithsonian. 1877/78 he led a Major G. M. Blake started expedition along the east coast of the United States. In 1879 he explored again, this time among others, accompanied by John Muir. At Mount McKinley Dall observed wandering white sheep; this type were later named in his honor as Dall sheep. His discoveries at Mount McKinley, he published in Meteorology and Bibliography of Alaska.
1880 and thereafter
In 1880, Dall Annette Whitney married. Your honeymoon the two spent in Alaska. After they arrived in Sitka his wife traveled back to Washington. Dall launched aboard the schooner Yukon straightway his last voyage of discovery. He was, among others, accompanied by the ichthyologist Tarleton Hoffman Bean.
Four years later, in 1884, left Dall, who meanwhile had already written more than 400 written works, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and began a year later at the newly created United States Geological Survey as a paleontologist, a position he held until 1925. He was honorary curator in 1880 for Mollusks U.S. National Museum ( Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC). This position he held until his death.
In 1899, Dall participated in the organized by the industrialist Edward Henry Harriman Alaska expedition to the coast of Alaska. During the expedition, a number of new genera and species were first described scientifically.
Memberships and Honors
Dall was, among others, 1882-1885 Vice President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 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.
According to him named species
- Dallina Beecher, 1895
- Dalli Ella Cossman, 1895
- Notoplax dalli Is & Iw. Taki, 1929
- Hanleya dalli Kaas, 1957.
- Dall sheep ( Ovis dalli ) Nelson, 1884
- Dall Hafenschweinswal ( Phocoenoides dalli, F. True 1885)
Publications (excerpt)
William Healey Dall published more than 500 mostly shorter treatises and essays. However, he also wrote several monographs.
- Alaska and its Resources. 1870
- A monograph of West American mollusks pyramidellid. 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