William Healey Dall

thumb|William Healey Dall William Healey Dall (August 21, 1845 – March 27, 1927) was an American naturalist, polymath, explorer of the interior of Alaska, and malacologist, known as one of the world's leading expert on living and fossil Mollusca molluscs. The mollusc genus Dalliella and at least 9 mollusc species are named in his honor, as well as Dall sheep Dall's sheep and Dall's porpoise Dall's porpoise. He was elected in 1897 to both the United States National Academy of Sciences National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Quotes Kurilla, who was an excellent shot and an enthusiastic sportsman, liked nothing better than to spend an hour every day shooting specimens for our collection. I obtained many more than I had dared to hope for in this way,—redpolls, Downy woodpecker downy and American three-toed woodpecker three-toed woodpeckers, pine grosbeaks, Baeolophus titmice, Northern hawk-owl hawk-owls, and (strange to say) a Eurasian bullfinch bullfinch (Pyrrhula), the first ever shot on the American continent. Alaska and Its Resources Lee and Shepard 1897 https://books.google.com/books?id=yn40AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA57 57 (627 pages) There is much in the distribution of the present marine invertebrate fauna of South America, east and west, to support the view so strongly urged by Hermann von Ihering von Ihering and others that a barrier existed between the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlantic north and Atlantic Ocean#South Atlantic south Atlantic basins during late geologic times, making it difficult for the South European animals to reach the South Atlantic unless by the roundabout way of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. In fact, without some such barrier it seems impossible to account for some of the facts of the present distribution of Marine life marine animals. 1908 The Mollusca and the Brachiopoda Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College XLIII 6 https://books.google.com/books?id=Ec4yAQAAMAAJ&pg=211 205–487, with 22 plates (quote from p. 211) In 1856 and 1863 the late Dr. Philip Pearsall Carpenter made reports to the British Association for the Advancement of Science "On the present state of our knowledge of the Mollusca of the northwest coast of America." These reports, published in 1857 and 1864, respectively, have been of the utmost value to students of the Tertiary period Tertiary and recent molluscan faunas of the coast. They not only analyzed the existing literature from the beginning, but systematized the data contained in it in a masterly way and at the cost of great labor. 1909 Contributions to the Tertiary Paleontology of the Pacific Coast: I. The Miocene of Astoria and Coos Bay, Oregon Professional Paper No. 59 of the U.S. Geological Survey Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office https://books.google.com/books?id=KNMqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA6 6 (278 pages) Quotes about William Healey Dall NAS Biographical Memoir WILLIAM HEALEY DALL was one of those remarkable men who encompassed a wide range of human knowledge. When a hundred of his friends gathered at the Cosmos Club in 1915, for a dinner in honor of his fifty years of service to science, nine speakers paid tribute to him as Alaskan pioneer, anthropologist, coast pilot, malacologist, paleontologist, zoologist, nomenclaturist, poet, and man. Wendell P. Woodring, William Healey Dall, 1845-1927 1958 Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences vol. 31 92–113 http://biographicalmemoirs.org/pdfs/dall-william.pdf To several generations of American beginners in paleontology Dall was best known for his classification of the pelecypods. He wrote the chapter on that class in Charles R. Estman Eastman’s Text-book of Paleontology, based on Karl Alfred von Zittel Zittel’s Grundzüge der Paläontologie (first edition, 1900; second edition, 1913). p. 100 In 1883 he raised funds to purchase the collection of some 25,000 specimens of eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean mollusks assembled by John Gwyn Jeffreys, including the specimens illustrated in Jeffreys' British Conchology. That collection is the nucleus of the present eastern Atlantic collection in the National Museum's Division of Mollusks. p. 102 External links Category:1845 births Category:1927 deaths Category:Explorers from the United States Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Scientists from Boston Category:Zoologists from the United States Category:Naturalists from the United States Category:Polymaths