Leonhard stejneger biography of abraham

(b Bergen, Noreg, 30 October 1851; d Pedagogue, District of Columbia, 28 Feb 1943)

ornithology, herpetology.

Having left his natal country, his father’s mercantile line of work, and his first wife consider it 1881, Stejneger moved to glory United States to seek situation to study his favorite problem, birds.

(In 1880 the once upon a time prosperous business of his cleric, Peter Stamer Steineger, had touch into bankruptcy.) At the prod of his mother, Ingeborg Catharina Hess Steineger. Leonhard had recognized toward a medical career nevertheless graduated in law (1875) inert the University of Kristiania (Oslo). He had long been commiserating in birds, and first accessible a work on them during the time that he was nineteen; he besides corresponded with ornithologists throughout picture world.

After arriving in the Mutual States, Stejneger went directly curry favor Spencer F.

Baird at depiction Smithsonian Institution and was directly hired to work under honesty curator of birds, Robert Ridgway. To fill the vacancy compare by H. C. Yarrow, Stejneger was appointed acting curator strip off reptiles and amphibians at rendering Smithsonian in 1889 and overwhelm years later became curator. Strange 1911 until his death, good taste was curator of the tributary of biology.

(He was let off from retirement by presidential order.)

Stejneger became a citizen of say publicly United States in 1887, president in 1892 he married Helene Maria Reiners. In addition in a jiffy becoming an honorary member suffer defeat many scientific societies, Stejneger was elected to the National College of Sciences (1923), received alteration honorary Ph.D.

from the Institute of Oslo, and was select honorary president for life condemn the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (1931). He was also made a commander rule the Royal Norwegian Order handle St. Olav (1939), a participant of the International Committee scrutinize Zoological Nomenclature (1898), and spick member of the Permanent Commission of One Hundred of authority International Ornithological Congresses (1905).

Swindler accomplished linguist, his skills stout useful at the many global meetings to which he was sent.

Stejneger began his extensive increase in 1882 with a statement to the Komandorskiya Ostrova Islands to help set up weather conditions stations for the United States Signal Service; there, he further gathered bones of the gone Pallas’s cormorant.

He returned concurrence these islands during the time 1895–1897 for the International Fur-Seal Commission. Stejneger collected specimens contain the American Southwest, in character South Dakota Badlands, in Puerto Rico, and, on a expect of trips to Europe represent scientific meetings, he collected specimens and made detailed studies look up to life zones of the Alps.

Stejneger produced a number of lucid and classificatory publications on birds; but his curatorial appointment monstrous his interests to reptiles lecture amphibians, so that he became an expert on the systematics of those groups.

With Saint Barbour, he completed five editions of the highly useful check-list of North American Amphibians prosperous Reptiles (Cambridge, Mass., 1917).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Latest Works. Stejneger’s 400 publications watchdog almost equally divided between ornithology and herpetology, but include mocker subjects as well, for show, a meticulously researched biography introduce the first Arctic naturalist, Georg Wilhelm Steller (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), and significant publications on covering seals.

In 1885 he available “Results of Ornithological Explorations affluent the Commander Islands and din in Kamtschatka,” in Bulletin. United States National Museum, 29 (1885), 1–382. He contributed extensively to Bathroom S. Kingsley, ed., Natural Account of Birds (Boston, 1885).

In give up work to the fifth ed.

be a devotee of Stejneger’s Cheklist,, which was tenuous Bulletin of the Museum preceding Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, 93 (1943), 1–260, “Poisonous Snakes of North America,” in Report of the United States Formal Museum for 1893 (1895), 337–487, is a classic in herpetology. Regional studies of birds mushroom of reptiles and amphibians restrain listed in the full roster accompanying Wetmore’s biography of Stejneger (see below).

II.

Secondary Literature. Vanquisher Wetmore wrote an account pageant Stejneger’s life, background, and systematic contributions in Biographical Memoirs. State Academy of Sciences, 24 (1945–1947), 143–195, with complete bibliography. Dialect trig shorter appreciation, with no slate, was written by Waldo Fame. Schmitt, in Systematic Zoology, 13 , no.

4 (1964), 243–249. An account of Stejneger’s education and personality, by A. Adolescent. Fisher, appeared in a homage issue of Copeia, (Oct. 1931), 75–83.

Elizabeth Noble Shor