Herbert Haviland Field
| Herbert Haviland Field | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 25, 1868 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Died | April 5, 1921 (aged 52) Zurich, Switzerland |
| Spouse(s) | Nina Eschwege |
| Children |
|
| Parent(s) |
|
| Relatives |
|
Herbert Haviland Field (April 25, 1868 – April 5, 1921) was an American zoologist who founded the Concilium Bibliographicum, a leading science information service in the early twentieth century and was the father of Noel Field and Hermann Field.
Herbert Haviland Field was born to a rich and culturally and politically liberal Brooklyn Quaker family on April 25, 1868. A product of his merchant father’s second marriage, Herbert had two step-brothers and a step-sister, as well as a brother, the famed artist Hamilton Easter Field, and a sister who died when she was just seven, devastating her parents, Aaron and Lydia. Although Herbert was a sickly child he showed signs of brilliance early-on and seems to have had a photographic memory. He showed his intellectual gifts at Brooklyn’s Friends School, the city’s advanced Polytechnic Institute and, then, at Harvard University where he majored in zoology, one of the new fields of study that were defining modern science methods. He earned his Ph.D. in 1893 then traveled to Europe for further studies, travels financed by his parents and aided by his extended Quaker family that included the famous and influential Haviland chinaware-makers of France. While in Europe, Herbert became a significant figure in the emerging infrastructure of science and attended professional meetings throughout Europe and America where the deepening problems of science information were receiving attention because of lack of universal coverage of the literature and because of competition between France, England and Germany over which nation would control bibliographies for the sciences.
Herbert decided not to continue his zoological research but to focus on the information problem, which was the difficulty at the time of locating relevant articles on a topic published in the growing number of scientific journals. It was initially his intention to reorganize the bibliography of zoological materials using the method of classification developed by Melvil Dewey. His mother and, later, a legacy from his father allowed him to form and initially self-finance the Concilium Bibliographicum in Zurich, Switzerland in 1895 to provide a service that would survey all the literature in zoology and related fields and send his subscribers indexed and abstracted notices every two weeks. The system would be organized on cards and could be subscribed by individuals or libraries. Working in cooperation with Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine of Belgium, who were building a similar index-card based system using the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system for a much broader range of subjects. Herbert developed the UDC schedules for Zoology and is credited with persuading Otlet and La Fontaine to adopt standard 75 x 125 mm card size.
...
Wikipedia