This biography of Williams Stimpson is much more than the history of a zoologist of the nineteenth century. The author's decades of research have given us a volume that goes beyond the facts of Stimpson's life but also gives insight into life in the mid-1800s and the beginning of the major scientific communities of the United States.Stimpson's professional career only lasted about twenty years until his death from tuberculosis at forty. He was born in a fairly affluent family in New England, where he had the opportunity to receive a higher education. His father steered his education toward business, but Stimpson also took courses in Latin, which prepared him for his future career in science.Stimpson's career path was influenced by two great naturalists of the day: Augustus A. Gould, who provided Stimpson a copy of his Report on Invertebrata of Massachusetts at Stimpson's request and became a mentor until Gould's death, and Louis Agassiz, a leading naturalist who introduced Stimpson to offshore dredging for marine life. Stimpson converted his father's basement into an aquarium of sorts where he observed mollusks and their life cycle. The author notes that Stimpson was one of the first to create the right mix of plants and animals to form a self-regulating ecosystem in an aquarium.Stimpson first published his observations and discoveries at seventeen years of age and joined societies that exposed him to others in the scientific community. This led to a two-year apprenticeship with Agassiz. Stimpson learned much of his taxonomy and zoological practices from Agassiz, but found Agassiz had difficulty recognizing his former students as equals. Vasile explores the difficulties Stimpson had with his early mentor throughout the book.The author spends several chapters chronicling Stimpson's early adventures as a field naturalist on exploration vessels in the Pacific. He collected multiple specimens, made new discoveries, and published and edited journals. Stimpson became a defender of the American scientific community, which was often looked down upon as inferior by the more established European scientists.In the mid to late 1850s Stimpson found himself living in Washington, DC, working to classify the growing collections of the Smithsonian Institution. While in Washington, Stimpson became a founding member of a gentlemen's social club called the Megatherium Club. With the Civil War looming large in the nation's capital, Stimpson also struggled to publish a major volume on mollusks, which would have included many of his own illustrations.During the Civil War, Stimpson worked on classifying the invertebrates in Agassiz's museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and made his only trip to Europe. Stimpson also began courting Ann Louis Gordon, whom he married. Together, they had a son and later boy and girl twins. He spent his honeymoon doing field work in New Jersey.In 1865, Stimpson was hired to what he thought was a temporary assignment to replace his friend and colleague Robert Kennicott, the curator of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. He took the position while a pregnant Ann stayed behind in Maryland with her parents. Many of his former ties, especially with the Smithsonian, allowed him to greatly expand the specimens of the academy.In the final chapters, the author shows how the last few years of Stimpson's life brought many tragedies. First, a fire at the Smithsonian destroyed many of his unpublished papers and materials. Both his friend, Robert Kennicott, and his early mentor, Alexander Gould, passed away. A fire at the academy damaged many museum pieces and much of his unpublished book on mollusks. Finally, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 completely destroyed the building and contents of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, including what remained of Stimpson's material for the mollusk book. The following year, after many episodes of sickness, he died from tuberculosis.Ronald Scott Vasile has assembled a wonderful biography of William Stimpson that is both scholarly and an entertaining read. The book includes an appendix of Stimpson's taxonomic work, notes on each chapter, a bibliography, references, and other source material. The author has indexed the work both by subject and name. This book will be an excellent resource to anyone interested in Stimpson, his work, his contemporaries, and life in the mid to late 1800s.
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Apr 22, 2024
Ginger Frost 
Open Access