William Dall
| William Healey Dall | |
|---|---|
W.H. Dall
|
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| Born | William Healey Cranch Dall 21 August 1845 Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America |
| Died | March 27, 1927 (aged 81) Washington, D.C, United States of America |
| Residence | United States of America |
| Citizenship | American |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Malacologist, Naturalist, Anthropologist, Biologist, Explorer, Cartographer, Paleontologist |
| Institutions | Western Union, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, United States Geological Survey |
| Education | English High School of Boston, Harvard College (did not graduate) |
| Known for | Exploration of Alaska, malacology, founding the National Geographic Society |
| Influences | Louis Agassiz, Augustus Addison Gould, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Jeffries Wyman, Robert Kennicott |
| Influenced | Paul Bartsch, Henry Augustus Pilsbry, Caesar Rudolf Boettger, R. Tucker Abbott |
| Notable awards | Honorary Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, Honorary A.M. from Wesleyan University, Honary L.L.D. from George Washington University, Gold Medal from Wagner Free Institute of Science, member of National Academy of Sciences, Foreign fellow of the Geological Society of London |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | Dall |
| Spouse | Annette Whitney (married 1880) |
| Children | Charles Whitney Dall, Marcus Healey Dall, Marian Dall |
William Healey Dall (August 21, 1845 – March 27, 1927) was an American naturalist, a prominent malacologist, and one of the earliest scientific explorers of interior Alaska. He described many mollusks of the Pacific Northwest of America, and was for many years America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks.
Dall also made substantial contributions to ornithology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, physical and cultural anthropology, oceanography and paleontology. In addition he carried out meteorological observations in Alaska for the Smithsonian Institution.
Dall was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father Charles Henry Appleton Dall, (1816–86), a Unitarian minister, moved in 1855 to India as a missionary. His family however stayed in Massachusetts, where Dall's mother Caroline Wells Healey was a teacher, transcendentalist, reformer, and pioneer feminist.
In 1862, Dall's father, on one of his few brief visits home, brought his son in contact with some naturalists at Harvard University, where he had studied, and in 1863, when Dall graduated from high school, he took a keen interest in mollusks. In 1863 he became a pupil of Louis Agassiz of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, in natural science. He encouraged Dall's interest in malacology, a field still in its infancy. He also studied anatomy and medicine under Jeffries Wyman and Dr. Daniel Brainerd.
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