Alpheus Hyatt

Alpheus Hyatt was an American zoologist and palaeontologist. Hyatt served as the founding president of the American Society of Naturalists from 1883 to 1884 and was the founding editor of the journal The American Naturalist. A student of Louis Agassiz, he was keenly involved in developing biology research and education and helped establish the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Biography

Alpheus Hyatt II was born in Washington, D.C. to Alpheus Hyatt and Harriet Randolph Hyatt. He briefly attended the Maryland Military Academy and Yale University, and after graduating from Harvard University in 1862, he enlisted as a private in the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry for the Civil War, emerging with the rank of captain.
After the war he worked for a time at the Essex Institute, and Alpheus Hyatt III.

Neo-Lamarckism

Hyatt's views on the evolution of species was expressed in his 1866 paper on On the Parallelism between the Different Stages of Life in the Individual and Those in the Entire Group of the Molluscous Order Tetrabranchiata. In this he claimed that extinction of a species was analogous to death of individual organisms. He proposed that there was an acceleration and a deceleration in the number of species over time which preceded extinction. The movement toward this Neo-Lamarckian understanding was supported by Edward Drinker Cope and Alpheus S. Packard. They were joined by Wiilliam H. Dall, Thomas Meehan, Joel A. Allen, Clarence King, Joseph Le Conte, and Henry Fairfield Osborn.

Publications

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