J. T. Gulick
| John Thomas Gulick | |
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| Born |
March 13, 1832 Kauaʻi Island, Hawaii |
| Died | April 14, 1923 (aged 91) Honolulu, Hawaii |
| Residence | Hawaii, China, Japan, Ohio |
| Citizenship | Hawaiian, American |
| Fields | Evolutionary Biology |
| Alma mater | Williams College |
| Known for | Evolutionary study of snails |
| Influences | Charles Darwin |
| Influenced | George Romanes |
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John Thomas Gulick (March 13, 1832 – April 14, 1923) was an American missionary and naturalist from Hawaii. He performed some of the first modern evolutionary studies, starting with a collection of Hawaiian land snails.
Gulick was born in Waimea on Kauaʻi Island, during the Kingdom of Hawaii. His father was missionary Peter Johnson Gulick (1796-1877) and mother was Fanny (Thomas) Gulick (1798-1883). In 1851, he started to collect and study Hawaiian land snails. He had been interested in snails (a field now known as Conchology) since his early teens, and developed independently the concept of their evolution. He discovered many species of snails were only found in very specific areas within the islands, and there was no overlap between these areas.
In 1853, after reading Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle and Hugh Miller's The Footprints of the Creator, Gulick presented his paper, "The Distribution of Plants and Animals", to the Punahou School Debating Society. In 1855, he enrolled for one year at New York University and then Williams College in Massachusetts, and studied in their Lyceum of Natural History. In 1859, he was elected Lyceum President, and graduated with an A.B. degree.
He then followed the family tradition of attending theological school, and enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1859 to 1861. While there, he read Darwin's On the Origin of Species. He then collected shells in Panama and Japan.
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