Maynard M. Metcalf
Maynard Mayo Metcalf was an American biologist and a professor of zoology at Johns Hopkins University. He was the only biologist who was allowed to testify in the Scopes Trial. Metcalf specialized in protozoal parasites which he examined in a wide range of hosts and was especially interested in the Opalinidae.
Life and work
Metcalf was born in Elyria, Ohio, to Eliab Wight and Eliza Mary Metcalf. The family was of English ancestry and an early settler had been a tapestry manufacturer. He was educated at Oberlin College, receiving a BA and later a ScD. His doctoral research was at Johns Hopkins University under W. K. Brooks. He then taught at the Goucher Women's College until 1906 after which he joined Oberlin College. He spent two years in Europe, first at Wurzburg with Theodor Boveri, then in Berlin followed by some time at the Naples Biological Station. He left Oberlin in 1914 and began private research at La Jolla, California until 1924. He spent two years at the National Research Council and from 1926 to 1933 he was a research associate with the rank of professor of zoology at Johns Hopkins University.Metcalf's main areas of interest were the biology and development of gastropods and tunicates, with a later focus on the protozoa. He supported the idea of orthogenetic evolution and directed mutations. He also supported the view that the distribution of related organisms with disjunct distributions could be explained the existence of former land bridges and argued with examples of some amphibian distributions on the basis of ideas proposed by William Diller Matthew aided by his supposed phylogeny of the protozoan parasites of the amphibians.