Joseph Grinnell
Joseph P. Grinnell was an American field biologist and zoologist. He made extensive studies of the fauna of California, and is credited with introducing a method of recording precise field observations known as the Grinnell System. He served as the first director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley from the museum's inception in 1908 until his death.
He edited The Condor, a publication of the Cooper Ornithological Club, from 1906 to 1939, and authored many articles for scientific journals and ornithological magazines. He wrote several books, among them The Distribution of the Birds of California and Animal Life in the Yosemite. He also developed and popularized the concept of the niche.
Early years
Joseph Grinnell was born February 27, 1877, the first of three children by his father Fordyce Grinnell MD and mother Sarah Elizabeth Pratt. Grinnell's father worked as the physician for the Kiowa, Comanche and Wichita Indian Agency near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. His distant cousins included the Massachusetts politician Joseph Grinnell and George Bird Grinnell who founded the Audubon Society.The Grinnells moved to the Pine Ridge Indian Agency in 1880.
In 1885 the Grinnell family moved to Pasadena, California, but the collapse of Southern California's boom forced Dr. Grinnell in 1888 to accept a position at the Indian school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Carlisle Indian school commander was Captain Richard Henry Pratt, a friend of the Grinnells.
Joseph Grinnell worked in a printing shop in Carlisle and collected his first specimen, a toad, before the family returned to Pasadena two years later.
First Alaska trip
Captain Pratt visited the Grinnells in Pasadena in 1896 while on a new assignment to inspect Indian Schools on the Pacific coast up to Alaska. The captain obtained permission from the family to take young Grinnell with him. Grinnell sent home bird specimens of the San Francisco Bay area, en route to Alaska. Captain Pratt completed his assignment and returned home. Grinnell remained in Alaska and continued collecting with the assistance of the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Haines, Alaska.Grinnell went on field trips throughout the area, including remote Saint Lazaria Island. An unintended overnight stay on the island enabled him to study storm-petrels, an account of which he published in the March 1897 issue of the Nidologist, an early publication of the Cooper Ornithological Club.
Grinnell's expanding collection attracted visitors who were tourists, summer residents and visiting naturalists, including John Muir, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and ornithologist Joseph Mailliard. Grinnell returned to Pasadena in the fall of 1897 where he continued field work in the nearby mountains and canyons.
Second Alaska trip
Grinnell's second visit to the far north began in 1898 on the schooner Penelope. He spent 18 months in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. Grinnell corresponded regularly with his family, the letters were later compiled and edited into the book Gold Hunting in Alaska, published by David C. Cook Publishing Company in 1901.Grinnell joined the Long Beach and Alaska Mining and Trading Company to Kotzebue Sound, Alaska. The company landed at Cape Blossom in Kotzebue Sound in July 1898. Grinnell collected and observed the summer migrant bird life; Gambel's sparrow, barn swallow, and Savannah sparrow, among others. By August, Grinnell had 75 bird specimens preserved, including a Siberian yellow wagtail. The miners spent the winter inland on the Kowak River , then returned to the coast that spring.
The company sailed on the Penelope to Cape Nome in July 1899. At Cape Nome, Grinnell's job was amalgamating the gold using mercury. The gold stampede to the Nome area in the period 1899–1900 was Alaska's largest in both amount of gold recovered and population increase. The gold fields yielded more than $57 million from 1898 to 1910. The site is now a National Historic Landmark, the Cape Nome Mining District Discovery Sites.
In Grinnell's letters, he described a chaotic scene as "the entire eight miles there is scarcely one hundred feet without one or more tents on it... our claims are now covered with beach jumpers and we cannot get them off. Mob law rules."
The Cooper Ornithological Club published Grinnell's field notes in 1900 as Pacific Coast Avifauna, no. 1.
Education
Grinnell was graduated from Pasadena High School in 1893 and enrolled in Throop Polytechnic Institute that autumn, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1897.In 1901 Grinnell received his master's degree from Stanford University. At Stanford, he met several influential people, among them were Edmund Heller. Heller would later join an expedition to Peru in 1915 to explore newly discovered ruins of an Incan civilization at Machu Picchu.
During his time at Stanford Grinnell formed the plan for a list of birds of California. He worked on that project for the next 38 years. He was finishing the third installment to Bibliography of California Ornithology when he died in 1939.
Grinnell supported himself at Stanford by teaching at Palo Alto High School and working in Stanford's Hopkins Seaside Laboratory. At Hopkins, Grinnell taught embryology in the summer of 1900 and in the summers of 1901 and 1902, ornithology.
A case of typhoid fever interrupted Grinnell's academic track and he returned to Pasadena in 1903 to recover. Grinnell accepted an offer as biology instructor at Throop Polytechnic during this time. Grinnell finished his Stanford Doctorate requirements—essentially by mail—with submission of his thesis An Account of the Mammals and Birds of the Lower Colorado Valley with Especial Reference to the Distributional Problems Presented and received his Doctorate in Zoology on May 19, 1913.
Students of Grinnell's biology class at Throop included Charles Lewis Camp and Joseph S. Dixon. Charles Camp would become the director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Joseph Dixon would join John Thayer's sponsored expedition in 1913 to Alaska. The Thayer expedition almost perished when their ship became locked in ice off the coast, east of Point Barrow until the summer of 1914. Dixon collected specimens during this time, including a new species of gull, Larus thayeri which was named for the expedition's sponsor.
Hilda Wood Grinnell
Grinnell married Hilda Wood on June 22, 1906. Wood was born in Tombstone, Arizona May 29, 1883. She was one of Grinnell's students at Throop and later his teaching assistant in zoology. Wood received her bachelor's degree from Throop in 1906. The Grinnells moved to Berkeley in 1908 and in 1913, Hilda earned her master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote articles for publications in The Condor and the Journal of Mammalogy and was a member of the American Ornithologists' Union and the California Academy of Sciences. Hilda Grinnell authored a 32-page biography in the January–February 1940 issue of The Condor.Hilda continued Grinnell's work on The Distribution of the Birds of California; maintained Grinnell's system of bibliographic entries, consulted the catalogs for accuracy, and read proofs and copy with the book's junior author, Alden H. Miller.
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
, philanthropist, naturalist and explorer, founded the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California in 1908. Alexander named Grinnell as museum director the same year. She believed that Grinnell was the right choice as director to the point that she was prepared to withdraw the endowment if UC officials objected to Grinnell.Historic meeting
Alexander met Grinnell in January 1907 while preparing for her expedition to Alaska; she came to Throop's biology department to find Joseph Dixon, Grinnell's student. Dixon had been recommended to Alexander by Frank Stephens, author of California Mammals. Grinnell endorsed Dixon as a member of Alexander's expedition, as they discussed Alaska. Grinnell invited Alexander to his home to view his collections, which she did before returning to Oakland. The name Annie M. Alexander seemed familiar and Grinnell found reprints among his papers from paleontologist John C. Merriam to Alexander, thanking her for her work and financial support. Satisfied of her commitment to research, he sent her a letter outlining specific points on field work that would maximize scientific results from the seven-member expedition.Alexander returned to California in the summer of 1907. She invited Grinnell to view the Alaska specimens. During the Thanksgiving holiday he met with Alexander at her home. The pair exchanged ideas for a museum on the West Coast that would be on par with the institutions of the eastern United States, such as the Smithsonian Institution. Alexander and Grinnell believed the fauna and flora of the western territory was fast disappearing as a result of human impact, thus detailed documentation was essential for both posterity and knowledge. This foresight proved useful almost a century later, when researchers at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology would use the Grinnell field notes to compare changes in California fauna.
Grinnell and Alexander differed on where the museum should be located. Grinnell advocated for Stanford while Alexander, impressed by the University of California paleontology lectures she had attended, determined that the museum would be at UC.
Alexander elaborated on the job requirements in a letter to Grinnell dated September, 1907 after she returned from Alaska: "I should like to see a collection developed and would be glad to give what support I could if I could find the right man to take hold; someone interested not only in bringing a collection together but with the larger object in view, namely gathering data in connection with the work that would have direct bearing on the important biological issues of the day. Work systematically and intelligently carried on is the work that counts."
Alexander appointed Grinnell director for one year, although he held that post for the remainder of his life.
He named the museum and in 1909, donated his collection of mammals, also his bound files of The Auk, The Condor and other publications. He gave his entire collection of bird specimens to the museum in 1920. The bird collection numbered more than 8,000.
The relationship between museum director and benefactess was unusual. Grinnell deferred to Alexander's wishes in almost every aspect of the museum's business. Alexander, in turn, expected Grinnell to devote all his time and energy to the enterprise, to continue research and publishing, in addition to the duties of director.
In 1908, Alexander had written to Grinnell asking for a recommendation of someone suitable for the upcoming 1908 expedition. His reply elicited a sharp response from Alexander: "Am rather relieved you could not recommend a lady for our trip, though regret your evident contempt of women as naturalists...." Alexander found Louise Kellogg to join the Alaska trip. A subsequent letter from Grinnell was even more frank, "I do hope your discovery proves tractable and industrious. One good test might be to have her string tags for five hours straight!"
Alexander supported the museum financially; during the ensuing 46 years, she contributed more than $1.5 million.