Karl P. Schmidt
| Karl Patterson Schmidt | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
June 19, 1890 Lake Forest, Illinois, U.S.A. |
| Died | September 26, 1957 (aged 67) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields | Biology, Herpetology, Animal geographies |
| Institutions | American Museum of Natural History, Chicago Natural History Museum |
| Alma mater | Lake Forest Academy, Cornell University |
| Notable students | Robert F. Inger |
| Notable awards | Guggenheim fellowship (1932), elected to National Academy of Sciences (1956), Ecological Society of America Eminent Ecologist (1957) |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | K. P. Schmidt |
| Spouse | Margaret Wightman |
Karl Patterson Schmidt (June 19, 1890, Lake Forest, Illinois – September 26, 1957, Chicago) was an American herpetologist.
Schmidt was the son of George W. Schmidt and Margaret Patterson Schmidt. George W. Schmidt was a German professor who, at the time of Karl Schmidt's birth, was teaching in Lake Forest, Illinois. His family left the city in 1907 and settled in Wisconsin. They worked on a farm near Stanley, Wisconsin, where his mother and his younger brother died in a fire on August 7, 1935. The brother, Franklin J. W. Schmidt, had been prominent in the then new field of wildlife management. Karl Schmidt married Margaret Wightman in 1919, and they had two sons, John and Robert.
In 1913, Schmidt entered Cornell University to study biology and geology. In 1915, he discovered his preference for herpetology during a four-month training course at the Perdee Oil Company in Louisiana. In 1916, he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts and made his first geological expedition to Santo Domingo. In 1952 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Earlham College.
From 1916 to 1922, he worked as scientific assistant in herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, under the well-known American herpetologists Mary Cynthia Dickerson and Gladwyn K. Noble. He made his first collecting expedition to Puerto Rico in 1919, then became the assistant curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1922. From 1923 to 1934, he made several collecting expeditions for that museum to Central and South America, which took him to Honduras (1923), Brazil (1926) and Guatemala (1933–1934). In 1937, he became the editor of the herpetology and ichthyology journal Copeia, a post he occupied until 1949. In 1938, he served in the U.S. Army. He became the chief curator of zoology at the Field Museum in 1941, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. From 1942 to 1946, he was the president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH). In 1953, he made his last expedition, which was to Israel.
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