Carl Leavitt Hubbs

Carl Leavitt Hubbs (October 19, 1894 – June 30, 1979) was an American ichthyologist.

He was born in Williams, Arizona. He was the son of Charles Leavitt and Elizabeth (née Goss) Hubbs. His father had a wide variety of jobs (farmer, iron mine owner, newspaper owner). The family moved several times before settling in San Diego where he got his first taste of natural history. After his parents divorced in 1907, he lived with his mother who opened a private school in Redondo Beach, California. His maternal grandmother Jane Goble Goss, one of the first female doctors, showed Hubbs how to harvest shellfish and other sea creatures.

One of his teachers, impressed by Hubbs abilities in science, recommended that he study chemistry at the University of Berkeley. The family moved once more to Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, George Bliss Culver, one of the many volunteers of David Starr Jordan, encouraged Hubbs to abandon his study of birds and instead to study fish, particularly those fish that inhabited the rivers of Los Angeles, which at that time had not been well researched. Hubbs completed his studies at Stanford University, following particularly the ichthyologist Charles Henry Gilbert, a disciple of Jordan. Gilbert became Hubbs's mentor, and gave him the responsibility of caring for a collection of fish from Stanford. During this same period, Hubbs met John Otterbein Snyder, another disciple of Jordan. Hubbs obtained his BA in 1916 and his Masters in 1917.

From 1917 until 1920 Hubbs served as the assistant curator of fish, amphibians and reptiles at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He married Laura Cornelia Clark on June 15, 1918, with whom he would have three children. His wife, who had also studied at Stanford, having received her BA in 1915 and her Masters in 1916, taught math.

In 1920, he took the position of curator of fish at the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan, a position he held for 24 years. In 1927, while working at the University of Michigan, he received his Ph.D., writing his dissertation on The Consequences of Structural Modifications of the Developmental Rate in Fishes Considered in Reference to Certain Problems of Evolution. Hubbs himself along with members of team and students contributed to the enrichment of the museum's collection. In 1929, he participated in an academic trip to Java where he collected five tons of specimens. Hubbs began to study hybridization among different species of fish.

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