William Healey 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.

William Healey Dall
W.H. Dall
Born
William Healey Cranch Dall

(1845-08-21)21 August 1845
Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
DiedMarch 27, 1927(1927-03-27) (aged 81)
Washington, D.C., United States of America
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipAmerican
EducationEnglish High School of Boston, Harvard College (did not graduate)
Known forExploration of Alaska, malacology, founding the National Geographic Society
Spouse(s)Annette Whitney (married 1880)
ChildrenCharles Whitney Dall, Marcus Healey Dall, Marian Dall
AwardsHonorary Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania,[1] Honorary A.M. from Wesleyan University, Honorary 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
Scientific career
FieldsMalacologist, Naturalist, Anthropologist, Biologist, Explorer, Cartographer, Paleontologist
InstitutionsWestern Union, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, United States Geological Survey
InfluencesLouis Agassiz, Augustus Addison Gould, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Jeffries Wyman, Robert Kennicott
InfluencedPaul Bartsch, Henry Augustus Pilsbry, Caesar Rudolf Boettger, R. Tucker Abbott
Author abbrev. (zoology)Dall

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.

Biography

Early life

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.[2]

First positions, first expeditions
Village on the lower Yukon during fishing season, June 1868, from an original sketch by Dall
Dall's 1875 map showing the distribution of native tribes in Alaska
Dall about 1888

Dall took a job in Chicago. There he met the famous naturalist Robert Kennicott (1835–1866) at the Chicago Academy of Sciences Museum. In 1865 the Western Union Telegraph Expedition was mounted to find a possible route for a telegraph line between North America and Russia by way of the Bering Sea. Kennicott was selected as the scientist for this expedition, and with the influence of Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, he took Dall as his assistant, because of his expertise in invertebrates and fish. Aboard the clipper Nightingale, under the command of the whaler and naturalist Charles Melville Scammon (1825–1911), Dall explored the coast of Siberia, with first several stops in Alaska (still Russian territory at that time). Scammon Bay, Alaska was named after Charles Scammon.

In 1866, Dall continued this expedition to Siberia. On a stop at St. Michael, Alaska, he was informed that Kennicott had died of a heart attack on May 13, 1866, while prospecting a possible telegraph route along the Yukon River. Set on finishing Kennicott's Yukon River work, Dall stayed on the Yukon during the winter. Because of cancellation of his own expedition, he had to continue this work at his own expense until autumn 1868. Meanwhile, in 1867, the U.S. had acquired Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. This was uncharted country, with a fauna and flora still waiting to be explored and described, a task Dall took upon himself as a surveyor-scientist.

Back at the Smithsonian in Washington, he started cataloguing the thousands of specimens he had collected during this expedition. In 1870 he published his account of his pioneering travels in Alaska and Its Resources, describing the Yukon River, the geography and resources of Alaska, and its inhabitants. Also in 1870, Dall was appointed Acting Assistant to the United States Coast Survey (renamed the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878).

Dall went on several more reconnaissance and survey missions to Alaska between 1871 and 1874. His official mission was to survey the Alaska coast, but he took the opportunity to acquire specimens, which he collected in great numbers. In 1871–72, he surveyed the Aleutian Islands. In 1874 aboard the U.S. Coast Survey schooner Yukon, he anchored in Lituya Bay, which he compared to Yosemite Valley in California, had it retained its glaciers.

He sent his collection of mollusks, echinoderms, and fossils to Louis Agassiz at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology; plants went to Asa Gray at Harvard; archaeological and ethnological material went to the Smithsonian. In 1877–1878 he was associated with the Blake expeditions", along the East Coast of the United States. The major publications on the Blake Expeditions were published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard.

Dall was in Europe in August 1878, sent to a meeting in Dublin of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He took the opportunity to visit mollusk collections and meet European scholars.

1880 and after

Dall married Annette Whitney in 1880. They travelled to Alaska on their honeymoon. After arriving in Sitka, his wife went back home to Washington, D.C. He began his final survey season aboard the schooner Yukon. He was accompanied, among others, by the ichthyologist Tarleton Hoffman Bean (1846–1916).

In 1882 Dall contributed for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee[3]

In 1884, Dall left the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, having already written over 400 papers. In 1885 he transferred to the newly created U.S. Geological Survey, obtaining a position as paleontologist. He was assigned to the U.S. National Museum as honorary curator of invertebrate paleontology, studying recent and fossil mollusks. He would hold this position until his death.

As part of his work for the U.S. Geological Survey, Dall made trips to study geology and fossils: in the Northwest (1890, 1892, 1895, 1897, 1901, and 1910), in Florida (1891), and Georgia (1893).

In 1899 he and an elite crew of scientists, such as the expert in glaciology John Muir, were members of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, aboard the S.S. George W. Elder, along the glacial fjords of the Alaska Coast, the Aleutian Islands and to the Bering Strait. Many new genera and species were described. Dall was the undisputed expert on Alaska, and the scientists aboard were often surprised by his erudition, both in biology and in respect to the cultures of the native Alaskan peoples. His contributions to the reports of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, include a chapter Description and Exploration of Alaska, and Volume 13, Land and Fresh-water Mollusks.

He spent two months at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii examining their shell collection.

Societies and honors

He was elected member of most of the U.S. scientific societies, vice-president of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) (1882, 1885), a founder of the National Geographic Society, and the Philosophical Society of Washington. In 1897 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was a Foreign Member of the Geological Society of London. His eminence also earned him several honorary degrees. Mount Dall, an 8,399-foot (2,560 m) peak in the Alaska Range, now in Denali National Park and Preserve, was named after Dall by A.H. Brooks of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1902.[4]

Publications

Dall published over 1,600 papers, reviews, and commentaries. He described 5,427 species, many of them mollusks.[5] Many of his papers were short, but a number of his publications were comprehensive monographs.

Title page of "A Monograph of West American Pyramidellid Mollusks" (1909)

Genera and species named in his honor

Brachiopods:

Mollusks:

Mammals:

References
  • Lindberg, D.R. "William Healey Dall: A Neo-Lamarckian view of molluscan evolution" (PDF). The Veliger. 41 (3): 227–238.
  • Dall, William Healey. (1870). Alaska and its Resources. Lee and Shepard, Boston. 627 pages. (also reprinted 1897)
  • Dall, William Healey. 1898. The Yukon Territory: The Narrative of W.H. Dall, Leader of the Expedition to Alaska in 1866–1868. London: Downey & Co.
  1. http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/dall-william.pdf
  2. Short biography and bibliography of W.H. Dall
  3. Box 18 Folder 40 William Healey Dall Archives Smithsonian Archives
  4. "Mount Dall". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
  5. Florence A. Ruhoff (1973), Bibliography and Zoological Taxa of Paul Bartsch, Biographical Sketch by Harald A. Rehder, Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, Number 143
  6. "Reviews". The Canadian Journal of Science, Literature and History. 12 (6): 480. August 1870. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
  7. "Mammal Species of the World - Browse: dalli". www.departments.bucknell.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-03.

Further reading
  • Boss, Kenneth J., Joseph Rosewater [and] Florence A. Ruhoff. The zoological taxa of William Healey Dall Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1968.
  • Merriam C.H. "WILLIAM HEALEY DALL" Science. 1927 Apr 8;65(1684):345-347.
  • Paul, Harald Alfred Rehder and Beulah E. Shields Bartsch. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF WILLIAM HEALEY DALL. Smithsonian Institution 1946.
  • Shor, Elizabeth Noble (1970–1980). "Dall, William Healey". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 535–537. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.
  • WOODRING, W.P. WILLIAM HEALEY DALL August 21, 1845—March 27, 1927 a Biographical Memoir National Academy of Sciences, Washington, 1958. 24 pp.
  • Marshall, Jack. Accumulated fragments: William Healey Dall Juneau Empire Posted May 12, 2013
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