Addison Emery Verrill

Addison Emery Verill (February 9, 1839, Greenwood, Maine – December 10, 1926, Santa Barbara, California) was an American zoologist. He was a student of Louis Agassiz at Harvard University and graduated in 1862. He went on scientific collecting trips with Alpheus Hyatt and Nathaniel Shaler in the summer of 1860 to Trenton Point, Maine and Mount Desert Island and in the summer of 1861 to Anticosti Island and Labrador. In 1864 Verrill made reports on mining, or prospective mining, properties in New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania. Two years after graduation from Harvard, he accepted a position as Yale University's first Professor of Zoology, and taught there from 1864 until his retirement in 1907.

Between 1868–70 he was professor of comparative anatomy and entomology in the University of Wisconsin. From 1860 Verrill investigated the invertebrate fauna of the Atlantic coast, with special reference to the corals, annelids, echinoderms, and mollusks, and became the chief authority on the living cephalopods, especially the colossal squids of the North Atlantic.