Ralph Vary Chamberlin

Ralph Vary Chamberlin was an American biologist, ethnographer, and historian from Salt Lake City, Utah. He was a faculty member of the University of Utah for over 25 years, where he helped establish the School of Medicine and served as its first dean, and later became head of the zoology department. He also taught at Brigham Young University and the University of Pennsylvania, and worked for over a decade at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, where he described species from around the world.
Chamberlin was a prolific taxonomist who named over 4,000 new animal species in over 400 scientific publications. He specialized in arachnids and myriapods, ranking among the most prolific arachnologists and myriapodologists in history. He described over 1,400 species of spiders, 1,000 species of millipedes, and the majority of North American centipedes, although the quantity of his output was not always matched with quality, leaving a mixed legacy to his successors. He also did pioneering ethnobiological studies with the Goshute and other indigenous people of the Great Basin, cataloging indigenous names and cultural uses of plants and animals. Chamberlin was celebrated by his colleagues at the University of Utah, however he was disliked among some arachnologists, including some of his former students. After retirement he continued to write, publishing on the history of education in his home state, especially that of the University of Utah.
Chamberlin was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the early twentieth century, Chamberlin was among a quartet of popular Mormon professors at Brigham Young University whose teaching of evolution and biblical criticism resulted in a 1911 controversy among University and Church officials, eventually resulting in the resignation of him and two other professors despite widespread support from the student body, an event described as Mormonism's "first brush with modernism".

Biography

Early life and education

Ralph Vary Chamberlin was born on January 3, 1879, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to parents William Henry Chamberlin, a prominent builder and contractor, and Eliza Frances Chamberlin. Chamberlin traced his paternal lineage to an English immigrant settling in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638, and his maternal lineage to an old Pennsylvania Dutch family. Born to Mormon parents, the young Chamberlin attended Latter-day Saints' High School, and although very interested in nature, initially decided to study mathematics and art before choosing biology. His brother William, the eldest of 12 children, also shared Ralph's scientific interests and would later teach alongside him. Ralph attended the University of Utah, graduating with a B.S. degree in 1898, and subsequently spent four years teaching high school and some college-level courses in biology as well as geology, chemistry, physics, Latin, and German at Latter-day Saints' University. By 1900 he had authored nine scientific publications.
In the summer of 1902 Chamberlin studied at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, and from 1902 to 1904 studied at Cornell University under a Goldwin Smith Fellowship, and was a member of the Gamma Alpha fraternity and Sigma Xi honor society. He studied under entomologist John Henry Comstock and earned his doctorate in 1904. His dissertation was a taxonomic revision of the wolf spiders of North America, in which he reviewed all known species north of Mexico, recognizing 67 out of around 150 nominal species as distinct and recognizable. Zoologist Thomas H. Montgomery regarded Chamberlin's monograph as one of "decided importance" in using the structure of pedipalps to help define genera, and in its detailed descriptions of species.

Early career: University of Utah

After returning from Cornell, Chamberlin was hired by the University of Utah, where he worked from 1904 to 1908, as an assistant professor then full professor. He soon began improving biology courses, which at the time were only of high school grade, to collegiate standards, and introduced new courses in vertebrate histology and embryology. He was the first dean of University of Utah School of Medicine, serving from 1905 to 1907. During the summer of 1906, his plans to teach a summer course in embryology at the University of Chicago were cancelled when he suffered a serious accident in a fall, breaking two leg bones and severing an artery in his leg. In 1907, university officials decided to merge the medical school into an existing department, which made Chamberlin's deanship obsolete. He resigned as dean in May, 1907, although remained a faculty member. The medical students strongly objected, crediting the school's gains over the past few years largely to his efforts.
In late 1907 and early 1908, Chamberlin became involved in a bitter lawsuit with fellow Utah professor Ira D. Cardiff that would cost them both their jobs. Cardiff, a botanist hired in spring of 1907, claimed Chamberlin offered him a professorship with a salary of $2,000 to $2,250 per year, but upon hiring was offered only $1,650 by the university regents. Cardiff filed suit for $350, which a court initially decided Chamberlin must pay, and Chamberlin's wages were garnished. The two became estranged and uncommunicative. There had been tension between them for some time—Chamberlin's supporters claimed Cardiff was involved in his dismissal as dean—and the Salt Lake Tribune noted "friction between the two men, of a different nature and not entirely due to financial matters, arose even before Professor Cardiff received his appointment". In March 1908 the university regents fired both Chamberlin and Cardiff, appointing a single new professor to head the departments of zoology and botany. In July, upon appeal, the suit was overturned and Cardiff ordered to pay costs. Chamberlin had by then secured a job at Brigham Young University.

Brigham Young University

In 1908, Chamberlin was hired to lead the Biology Department at Brigham Young University, a university owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, during a period which BYU president George H. Brimhall sought to increase its academic standing. LDS College professor J. H. Paul, in a letter to Brimhall, had written Chamberlin was "one of the world's foremost naturalists, though, I think, he is only about 28 years of age. I have not met his equal ... We must not let him drift away". Chamberlin oversaw expanded biology course offerings and led insect-collecting trips with students. Chamberlin joined a pair of newly hired brothers on the faculty, Joseph and Henry Peterson, who taught psychology and education. Chamberlin and the two Petersons worked to increase the intellectual standing of the university. In 1909 Chamberlin's own brother William H. Chamberlin was hired to teach philosophy. The four academics, all active members of the Church, were known for teaching modern scientific and philosophic ideas and encouraging lively debate and discussion. The Chamberlins and Petersons held the belief that the theory of evolution was compatible with religious views, and promoted historical criticism of the Bible, the view that the writings contained should be viewed from the context of the time: Ralph Chamberlin published essays in the White and Blue, BYU's student newspaper, arguing that Hebrew legends and historical writings were not to be taken literally. In an essay titled "Some Early Hebrew Legends" Chamberlin concluded: "Only the childish and immature mind can lose by learning that much in the Old Testament is poetical and that some of the stories are not true historically." Chamberlin believed that evolution explained not only the origin of organisms but of human theological beliefs as well.
In late 1910, complaints from stake presidents inspired an investigation into the teachings of the professors. Chamberlin's 1911 essay "Evolution and Theological Belief" was considered particularly objectionable by school officials. In early 1911 Ralph Chamberlin and the Peterson brothers were offered a choice to either stop teaching evolution or lose their jobs. The three professors were popular among students and faculty, who denied that the teaching of evolution was destroying their faith. A student petition in support of the professors signed by over 80% of the student body was sent to the administration, and then to local newspapers. Rather than change their teachings, the three accused professors resigned in 1911, while William Chamberlin remained for another five years.
In 1910, Chamberlin was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Pennsylvania and Harvard

After leaving Brigham Young, Chamberlin was employed as a lecturer and George Leib Harrison Foundation research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania from 1911 to 1913. From March 1913 to December 31, 1925, he was the Curator of Arachnids, Myriapods, and Worms at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, where many of his scientific contributions were made. Here his publications included surveys of all known millipedes of Central America and the West Indies; and descriptions of animals collected by the Canadian Arctic Expedition ; by Stanford and Yale expeditions to South America; and by various expeditions of the USS Albatross. He was elected a member of the American Society of Naturalists and the American Society of Zoologists in 1914, and in 1919 served as second vice-president of the Entomological Society of America. He served as a technical expert for the U.S. Horticultural Board and U.S. Biological Survey from 1923 until the mid-1930s.

Return to Utah

Chamberlin returned to the University of Utah in 1925, where he was made head of the departments of zoology and botany. When he arrived, the faculty consisted of one zoologist, one botanist, and an instructor. He soon began expanding the size and diversity of the biology program, and by the time of his retirement the faculty consisted of 16 professors, seven instructors, and three special lecturers. He was the university's most celebrated scientist according to Sterling M. McMurrin, and his course on evolution was among the most popular on campus. He established the journal Biological Series of the University of Utah and supervised the graduate work of several students who would go on to distinguished careers, including Willis J. Gertsch, Wilton Ivie, William H. Behle and Stephen D. Durrant; the latter three would later join Chamberlin as faculty members. From 1930 to 1939, Chamberlin was secretary-treasurer of the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement Board and conducted mosquito surveys of the region, identifying marshes controlled by local hunting clubs as the main source of salt marsh mosquitoes plaguing the city. From 1938 to 1939 he took a year-long sabbatical, during which he studied in European universities and museums, presided over a section of the International Congresses of Entomology in Berlin, and later studied biology and archaeology in Mexico and South America. In 1942 he received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Utah. He retired in 1948, and in 1957, an honor ceremony was held by the Utah Phi Sigma Society in which a portrait of Chamberlin painted by Alvin L. Gittins was donated to the university and a book of commemorative letters produced. In 1960 the University of Utah Alumni Association awarded Chamberlin its Founders Day Award for Distinguished Alumni, the university's highest honor.
Chamberlin was noted by colleagues at Utah for being a lifelong champion of the scientific method and instilling in his students ideas that natural processes must be used to explain human existence. Angus and Grace Woodbury wrote that one of his greatest cultural contributions was his ability "to lead the naive student with fixed religious convictions gently around that wide gulf that separated him from the trained scientific mind without pushing him over the precipice of despair and illusion." His influence continued as his students became teachers, gradually increasing societal understanding of evolution and naturalistic perspectives. His colleague and former student Stephen Durrant stated "by word, and especially by precept, he taught us diligence, inquisitiveness, love of truth, and especially scientific honesty". Durrant compared Chamberlin to noted biologists such as Spencer Fullerton Baird and C. Hart Merriam in the scope of his contributions science.