Biographies

Remington Kellogg

Readers of this entire series may notice that almost every paleontologist profiled had a childhood fascination for nature study. Arthur Remington Kellogg fit this same mold. Born in Davenport, Iowa in 1892, Remington Kellogg (he dropped the Arthur early on) moved to Kansas City, Missouri, when he was six, and there he attended grade school. By the time he was in high school he was studying wildlife in the nearby woods and making a collection of mounted mammals and birds. Kellogg attended the University of Kansas, at first studying entomology, then mammology. He did not come from a wealthy family and had to work his way through school. He sold dry goods, poured concrete, delivered papers, and worked in a smoke house for a meat packing plant. He received his A.B. in 1915 and his M.A. in 1916.

In the fall of 1916 he entered the University of California, Berkeley, in pursuit of a Ph.D. He began by studying zoology, but the following year his schooling was interrupted by World War I. He became a sergeant in the 20th Engineer Battalion. As luck would have it (for a naturalist) he was assigned the job of rat control in the trenches and base ports of France. This gave him time to record daily observations on other wildlife and to collect bird skins for the museums at Berkeley and Kansas. Kellogg returned to Berkeley in 1919. There, Professor John C. Merriam of the paleontology department encouraged Kellogg to study the rich record of fossil marine mammals being unearthed on the Pacific Coast. Soon Kellogg developed a love for marine mammal paleontology that would last the rest of his life.

In 1920 Kellogg married a fellow student, Marguerite Henrich, and they moved to Washington, D.C., where he took a job with the Biological Survey. This agency performed work similar to the modern Fish and Wildlife Service. Kellogg studied the feeding habits of hawks, owls, and alligators to determine the possible adverse economic impact of predators. Such was the primitive state of "ecology studies" at that time. Kellogg was methodical in his work, making him well suited for his assignments. One project involved dissecting 1,098 marsh hawk pellets so as to determine the birds' diet.

In the meantime, Professor Merriam became president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. He made Kellogg a research associate and secured research grants so that Kellogg could continue his studies of fossils on the side. Kellogg published the bulk of his paleontological works during the 1920s and 1930s. He described fossil pinnipeds and cetaceans from the Sharktooth Hill in Kern County, a fossil sea cow and humpback whale from Santa Barbara County, the "sea lion" Dusignathus santacruzensis,from the Monterey Bay area. He also studied marine mammal fossils from other parts of North and South America and made trips to Europe to compare the fossils with specimens there.

In 1928 his Ph.D. dissertation "The History of Whales--Their Adaptation to Life in the Water," was published in the Quarterly Review of Biology.Although over seventy years have past, this paper is still one of the best summaries of whale adaptations. This paper firmly established Kellogg as a prominent cetologist, which eventually led to service on the International Whaling Commission.

Also in 1928 Kellogg left the Biological Survey and transferred to the division of mammals at the U.S. National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History) at the Smithsonian Institution. There he rose through the administrative ranks, eventually becoming assistant secretary of the Smithsonian. With the heavy load of administrative work at the Smithsonian, he was not able to spend as much time studying fossils. But when he retired in 1962, Kellogg plunged right in again. Between 1962 and his death in 1969 he published a series of papers on fossil marine mammals of the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland. He had first begun collecting there some forty years earlier.

Following his death, the Remington Kellogg Memorial Fund was established at Museum of Paleontology, U.C. Berkeley, to support graduate student research on cetaceans. Today, with the help of new discoveries, marine mammal paleontologists continue to build upon Kellogg's pioneering contributions.

By Frank Perry

Chester Stock

The majority of career paleontologists grew up in rural areas where they were exposed to fossils as youngsters. A few, however, grew up in the city where their first exposure to the subject was through museums. The latter was true for Chester Stock, who was born and raised in San Francisco. His is a Horatio Alger story from poverty to professor and world-famous paleontologist.

Stock was born in 1892 to German-immigrant parents. He lived in a rough neighborhood, surrounded by the seamier side of the big city. But Stock did well in school, and on weekends studied German, went to Sunday school, and took tuba lessons. His introduction to paleontology came at the foot of a life-sized mammoth replica and an array of impressive fossils in the California Academy of Sciences museum, then on Market Street. Stock was 14 when the 1906 earthquake and fire leveled most of the city. The Stock family lost their home and business and never fully recovered. Young Chester quit school temporarily and went to work at the Union Iron Works. The hard labor ruined his health. Then he contracted malaria. When he recovered, the family sent him back to school, and he graduated from high school with honors in 1910.

Stock entered the University of California, Berkeley, intending to major in medicine, but soon switched to vertebrate paleontology, apparently under the persuasive influence of Professor John C. Merriam. Stock graduated with a B.S. in 1914 and a Ph.D. in 1917. Merriam was always looking for students to help research various animal groups that interested him. Merriam "gave" Stock the ground sloths as a catagory to work on, and he published several papers on them prior to graduation. A few years later, Stock's 206-page masterpiece on the ground sloths of Western North America was completed, establishing him as the authority on this group. The paper paid particular attention to fossils from Rancho La Brea.

As a young man, Stock was and energetic field worker. Expeditions to Nevada and Oregon were tough back in those days, but Stock stayed optimistic and in good humor. Colleague R. J. Russell told this story of a 1919 field trip to Nevada:

"Fossil hunting was terrible along Muddy Valley. Day after day, and in terrific heat, we would walk along the topographic complexities of the badlands, Chet on one ledge and I on another nearby. At length a prayer would be heard from Chet, a prayer of request starting with a petition for the complete skeleton of some extremely rare Tertiary mammal. In continuation it would ask for a jaw, for a tooth, for a tooth fragment, for a leg bone, a vertebra, and eventually terminate with some such statement as, 'If Thou seest not fit to reward Thy sweating but humble servants, the lowly paleontologists who scan with care each mineral grain of Thy creation under the rays of Thy ever-shining sun, with even the astragalus of a camel, wilt Thou grant unto Thy humble supplicants the pleasure of finding at least one bone fragment, one splinter, or the tiniest chip of some animal creation which once lived, loved, and roamed in these Thy broad dominions.'"

Stock stayed on at Berkeley, first as an assistant and later as an assistant professor. In 1924 Stock accepted an offer to join the expanding geology department at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Eventually he became chairman of the department and was also a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Stock had a broad interest in western North American Cenozoic mammals and authored nearly 175 publications. Most of these were technical, but he wrote popular articles too, including several for the magazine Westwaysin the late 1930s and early 1940s. He is perhaps best known for his research on the Rancho La Brea fauna. His popular book Rancho La Brea, A Record of Pleistocene Life in Californiawas first published in 1930 by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In 1992 the museum published the seventh edition of his famous work, with revisions by John M. Harris.

Stock married his first wife, Clara M. Doud, in 1921 and they had a boy and a girl. She died in 1934, and in 1935 he married Margaret G. Wood, with whom he had one son.

Despite several tragedies in his life, Stock was nearly always cheerful and in good humor. He was ever humble, and his ability to listen carefully to others and smooth over controversy made him a good administrator. Through teaching, public lectures, and popular articles he became an ambassador for vertebrate paleontology. Chester Stock was starting to make plans for a museum at Rancho La Brea when he died suddenly in December of 1950. It would be another quarter century before the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries was built, turning Stock's dream into reality. Fittingly, today many of the La Brea fossils he studied as well as his reprint library and correspondence are preserved at the Page Museum.

By Frank Perry

James G. Cooper

James G. Cooper was born June 19, 1830, in New York City and was no doubt influenced early in life by his father, William Cooper. His father was a skilled naturalist and founder of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. The elder Cooper was one of the first Americans to publish articles on vertebrate paleontology, and the Cooper's Hawk was named in his honor. Unfortunately, James's mother, Mary Wilson Cooper, died when he was about five. In 1837 the family moved to a farm in New Jersey where young James grew up hunting, fishing, and collecting shells, birds' nests, reptiles, and other natural history specimens. He kept squirrels, a raccoon, and an opossum as pets.

There were few jobs in the natural sciences in those days so, typical of many naturalists at that time, James Cooper pursued and received medical degree. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City in 1851. The medical training also gave him a general background in science and would enable him to, if necessary, earn a living as a physician while pursuing his nature studies on the side.

Over the next decade, however, he worked at a series of government jobs where he used both skills. In 1852 Cooper learned of plans for a series of government surveys and explorations of the West. So he wrote to Spencer Fullerton Baird, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian, who helped find scientists for the expeditions. Baird liked Cooper's enthusiasm. It would indeed be strange, Baird wrote back, "if the son of one so intimately connected with the progress of American science as your father should not have some of his tendencies."

The following year Cooper was assigned the job of surgeon and naturalist on a government expedition in search of a transcontinental railroad route through the Northwest. Young Cooper, thrilled at the opportunity to explore new lands, set off on April 28th, 1853, on a steamer for the Washington Territory. They traveled by way of the Isthmus of Panama and arrived at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River in mid June. The survey was to be made by the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, under the leadership of Captain George B. McClellan (later to gain fame during the Civil War). The government wanted to know not only about topography, but also about fauna, flora, and geological resources. Wrote Baird:

"The general principles to be observed in making collections of natural history in a new country or one previously unexplored, is to collect everything which may present itself, from time to time, subject to the convenience or practicality of transportation. The number of specimens secured will, of course, depend upon the dimensions, and the variety of form or condition caused by the different features of age, sex, or season. ...In collecting specimens of any kind, it will be important to fix, with the utmost precision, the localities where found. ...It will not be possible to collect minerals, fossils, and geological specimens in very great quantity or dimensions...."

The team set out in mid July to explore the Cascade Range, with hopes of finding a pass over the mountains. Over the next ten months, Cooper took notes and collected birds, plants, and other specimens for shipment back to the Smithsonian. He was paid a salary of $70 per month. Even after the expedition disbanded, Cooper remained in Washington Territory, exploring the region between the Columbia River and Puget Sound.

Over the next few years Cooper participated in several other government explorations including the Wagon Road Expedition of 1857 and the Military Expedition to the West in 1860. He also hiked through New England and traveled to Florida (partly with his own funds) in search of specimens for museums.

When not traveling, he kept busy at the Smithsonian, writing up the results of his investigations. In Washington he worked with other important scientists, and made connections with high ranking military and political figures, including President Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant. There were other amenities too: "Saturday, P.M. I went on an excursion to Arlington and had a pleasant time -- dined at Colonel [Robert E.] Lee's with a large party, many of them charming damsels, and walked home with two of the beautifullest girls in Washington."

But Cooper became depressed at the amount of time it took to get his reports published and soon longed for the wilds.

"I wish I could find pleasure in any of the common ways, but boating, theatre, opera, and all other such things have not charm for me, and I fear if I do not soon get away from civilized life into the wild woods of Florida or most anywhere else I shall get sick..."

In 1860, Cooper returned to the West Coast, eventually landing a job with the Geological Survey of California, led by Professor Josiah D. Whitney. The state legislature had appointed Whitney State Geologist and directed him: �With aid of such assistants as he may appoint, to make an accurate and complete Geological Survey of the State, and to furnish, in his Report of the same, proper maps and diagrams thereof, with a full and scientific description of its rocks, fossils, soils, and minerals, and of its botanical and zoological productions, together with specimens of the same.� Cooper worked on and off for the survey, which suffered from sporadic funding, over the next ten years. He explored southern California, the Farallone and Channel Islands, the Sierra, and the Santa Cruz Mountains, among others.

Cooper visited Monterey in 1861, where he hired a boat to help in dredge for marine life in Carmel Bay. He first visited Santa Cruz as in 1864. Here, he hoped to find people with a love "...of simple pleasures and rural life..." He predicted that someday the town would become a second Newport (referring to Newport, Rhode Island). The place apparently appealed to him. In early 1866, after marrying his wife Rosa, they moved to Santa Cruz, and he set up a medical practice. In September he wrote to Baird:

"I am not making expenses yet at practice, but hope to make a living at it after a while. It however keeps me pretty close [to] my office and prevents my collecting much, as I have to be on hand in case of accident and not let them go to one of the six other doctors in town."

Another letter from Santa Cruz, to British malachologist Philip Carpenter, reveals Cooper's frustrations trying to carry out his scientific work:

"As to the pay, I care little, for it is not enough in this country to be worth the trouble of working for; in fact, I got only half paid for my report on the four classes [of] vertebrates and Mollusca. ...I have been following your example and getting married, and now have to pay closer attention to my profession, which in this country will not allow me to study the natural sciences very deeply, as the practical Americans always consider a man either deranged or neglectful of his business if he is known to be a naturalist."

Cooper, his wife, and newborn son left Santa Cruz in 1867 and eventually settled in Hayward where he finally managed to balance the practice of medicine with the study of natural history.

Cooper was a Renaissance man of natural science back at a time when it was still possible to hold such a title. He published on an incredible variety of topics: medicinal plants, forest trees, birds, mammals, reptiles, land snails, freshwater clams, coal distribution, marine mollusks, fishes, and fossils. In all, he wrote over 150 papers. With regard to paleontology, his greatest contribution was assembling a catalog of fossils collected by the California Geological Survey, published in 1888. He also wrote a "Catalogue of Californian Fossils," published in 1894. In it he described several new species of fossil mollusks. He published separate reports on the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene paleogeography in California. In his 1874 paper "California in the Miocene Epoch," he correctly concluded that much of the Coast Ranges south of San Francisco were under water during that time period.

James Graham Cooper died in Hayward in 1902. William Healy Dall, at that time America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks, paid tribute to the pioneer naturalist:

"He was one of the original group of young naturalists which gathered around Professor Baird in the early days of the [Smithsonian] Institution...and whose names are classic in the annals of zoology in this country. ... Dr Cooper ... for years ... was dependent upon his medical practice for support. But in spite of these handicaps his work on the Pacific coast has been of primary importance, and by his death passes away the last member of a group of men to whom American zoology is permanently indebted."

Several species of marine mollusks, as well as the Cooper Ornithological Club, were named in his honor.

By Frank Perry