Obituary: Donald Frederick Hoffmeister: 1916–2011

Abstract

Donald F. Hoffmeister was born in San Bernardino, California, on 21 March 1916, the only child of Julia Hillgarten and Percival Hoffmeister. He died at the age of 94 in his sleep at 5:20 PM on Sunday, 6 February 2011, at the Champaign-Urbana Regional Rehabilitation Center in Savoy, Illinois. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living mammalogist. He is survived by 2 sons, Dr. Ronald Hoffmeister, who is a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, and Dr. Robert Hoffmeister, who is a physician in Bellingham, Washington, and 2 grandchildren. Growing up, his parents had slated him for a medical college education, following in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, who had gone to California in the gold rush of 1849. However, his father, an astute observer of nature, opened Don's mind to natural history at a young age by demonstrating to him how the talons of a hawk's feet open and release, how the lid of a trapdoor spider's burrow works, and how to make a figure-four box trap for catching squirrels (Hoffmeister 2005). After graduation from San Bernardino High School with highest honors in 1933, young Hoffmeister attended San Bernardino State College for 2 years. While there, he took a course in zoology and came under the influence of Dr. Elton R. Edge, who had just finished a summer session in Nevada with E. Raymond Hall's field crew collecting mammals. Edge introduced him to the art of making study skins and cleaning skulls. Soon he had a bag of Museum Specials (the standard mouse-sized snap-kill trap designed for collecting small mammal specimens with minimum skeletal damage) and his dad eagerly accompanied him in collecting. After 2 years at State College, he went off to the University of California at Berkeley to get a bachelor's …