Richard Rathbun papers

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 3138

Scope and content

Collection consists of field notebooks and correspondence, both rough drafts and typed letters, covering those years Rathbun was involved with the U.S. Fish Commission. The 1885-1895 material deals mostly with Montana, Wyoming, the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, the New England coast, and Mexico.

Dates

1852-1918.

Creator

Rathbun, Richard, 1852-1918. (Affiliation: (Cornell University Class of 1875),.) (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Richard Rathbun was born in Buffalo, New York on January 25, 1852. He bcame curator of the paleontological museum of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. He studied geology and paleontology at Cornell until 1873, when he left to study under Louis Agassiz at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In the summers he was voluntary assistant to Spencer F. Baird in the explorations of the U.S. Fish Commission along the New England coast. The Commission employed him as an assistant from 1878-1896, and he was in charge of research from 1887 on. In 1879-1880 he also served as an assistant in zoology at Yale. He then moved to Washington, D.C. and became curator of the department of marine invertebrates at the National Museum, a position he held for 34 years. He also continued working for the Fish Commission. In 1897 he became assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and in 1898 he was put in charge of the National Museum. He was a member of the Biological Society of Washington, the Washington Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Boston Society of Natural History, the American Society of Naturalists, the American Association of Museums, the American Fisheries Society, and others.