Charles Henry Gilbert | |
|---|---|
 Charles Henry Gilbert, about 1920 | |
| Born | (1859-12-05)December 5, 1859 |
| Died | April 20, 1928(1928-04-20) (aged 68) |
| Alma mater | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ichthyology |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | David Starr Jordan |
| Doctoral students | |
Charles Henry Gilbert (December 5, 1859 inRockford, Illinois – April 20, 1928 inPalo Alto, California) was a pioneerichthyologist andfishery biologist of particular significance tonatural history of the western United States. He collected and studiedfishes fromCentral America north toAlaska and described many newspecies. Later he became an expert onPacific salmon and was a notedconservationist of thePacific Northwest. He is considered by many as the intellectual founder of American fisheries biology.[1][2] He was one of the 22 "pioneer professors" (founding faculty) ofStanford University.
Born inRockford, Illinois, Gilbert spent his early years inIndianapolis, Indiana, where he came under the influence of his high school teacher,David Starr Jordan (1851‒1931). When Jordan became Professor of Natural History atButler University in Indianapolis, Gilbert followed and received his B.A. degree in 1879. Jordan moved toIndiana University, inBloomington, in the fall of 1879, and Gilbert again followed, receiving his M.S. degree in 1882 and Ph.D. in 1883. His doctorate was the first such degree ever awarded byIndiana University.[2][3]
Little is known about Gilbert's personal life.[4][5][6] His wife, Julia Ringold Hughes (born December 6, 1849,Bloomington, Indiana) was a student atIndiana University and became superintendent of high schools in Bloomington. She died in California on November 30, 1916. There were three children, Carl (1891‒1963), Winnifred (Mrs. Carl F. Braun, 1886‒1980), and Ruth (Mrs. Percy R. Baker, 1885‒1982), all of whom graduated fromStanford University.[2][7][8]
Jordan and Gilbert, along with other students forming the so-called "Jordan School of Ichthyology", explored the streams and rivers ofIndiana and the southeastern United States in the late 1870s, describing a number of new fishes. In 1879, Jordan was asked bySpencer Fullerton Baird (1823‒1887), Director of the U.S. Fish Commission, to undertake a survey of the fisheries of thePacific Coast of the United States. Jordan took leave of absence fromIndiana University, chose Gilbert as his assistant, and headed west toSan Francisco in December 1879. Their one-year pioneering survey of fishes of the West, fromSouthern California toVancouver Island,British Columbia, laid the foundation for nearly 50 years of study of Pacific fishes and fisheries by the team of Jordan and Gilbert.[3][9]
By the time Gilbert received his doctoral degree at the age of 24, he was the author or co-author (mostly with Jordan) of over 80 scientific publications. Gilbert served at Indiana University from 1880‒1884, first as instructor, then as Assistant Professor in Natural Sciences and Modern Languages. In 1884, he accepted the Professorship of Natural History at theUniversity of Cincinnati, inOhio, remaining there until December 1888. In 1889, Gilbert returned to Indiana University as Professor of Natural History.[1][2][3]
Jordan became President of Indiana University in 1885. However, in 1890, U.S. SenatorLeland Stanford (1824‒1893) and his wife Jane Eliza Lathrop Stanford (1828‒1905) chose Jordan to be the founding president of a new university to be established inPalo Alto, California, in memory of their deceased son,Leland Stanford, Jr. (1868‒1884). Among Jordan’s first appointments to the new faculty was Charles Henry Gilbert as the Chairman of the Zoology Department.[2][3][10]
AtStanford University, Gilbert began a career that spanned nearly 37 years.[8][10] He concentrated on Pacific fish, mostly marine, and participated in numerous expeditions aboard the U.S. Fish Commission SteamerAlbatross. These cruises included three toAlaska, two offCalifornia, and one each to theHawaiian Islands and theJapanese Archipelago.[2][11][12] As a pioneer descriptiveichthyologist, Gilbert described either alone or with others about 117 new genera and 620 species of fishes. He published about 172 papers on fishes.[2]
Around 1909, Gilbert turned his attention to the study ofPacific salmon and soon became the foremost expert on these economically important fish. He studied salmon from California to Alaska, but concentrated his efforts in British Columbia (from about 1912‒1921) and in Alaska (from 1918‒1927). He was the first to correctly apply the scale method to aging of Pacific salmon, he pioneered racial studies ofsalmon using scales, and he was instrumental in establishing tagging programs on salmon in Alaska. He was the first to confirm the "home stream" theory to spawning salmon. Additionally, he was also one of the first scientists to consider thepopulation dynamics of northwest stocks of salmon.[2][8][13]
In his later years, Gilbert became an outspoken champion of the need for conservation of Pacific salmon resources, warning all who would listen that this resource was in dire jeopardy unless over-fishing was curtailed. His world view was far ahead of his time and he urged the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to instigate data collection programs for Alaska salmon.[1]
Always formal and proper, Gilbert nevertheless was a demanding person with a sharp eye and an even sharper temper. He supervised the graduate studies of several ichthyologists and fishery biologists who became notable in their field, among themWilliam Francis Thompson (1888‒1965) andCarl Leavitt Hubbs (1894‒1979).[1][2][7][8]
Gilbert died in 1928 at the age of 68, but he is remembered and honored by ichthyologists and fishery biologists around the world for his many contributions. The Gilbert Fisheries Society was established in 1931 at theCollege of Fisheries,University of Washington (UW). The organization was short-lived, however, and the society was reconstituted in 1989 as the Gilbert Ichthyological Society. AUnited States Fish and Wildlife Service fisheriesresearch vessel incommission from 1952 to 1973 was namedUS FWS Charles H. Gilbert[14] and a building at Stanford University is named the Charles H. Gilbert Biological Sciences Building.[2]
In 1998, the UW School of Fisheries (now the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences) was the recipient of the "Dorothy T. Gilbert Endowed Ichthyology Research Fund," established by Dorothy Thomlinson Gilbert (1929‒2008), the wife of William W. Gilbert, the late grandson of Charles Henry. In 2008, the Dorothy T. Gilbert Endowed Professorship was established in the UW College of Ocean and Fisheries Science (now the College of the Environment) with the initial occupant of that position being the distinguished UW ichthyologist,Theodore Wells Pietsch III (1945‒ ).
Gilbert is commemorated in the scientific names of three species of lizards:Phyllodactylus gilberti,Plestiodon gilberti, andXantusia gilberti.[15]
TheGilbert's garden eelAriosoma gilberti was named byJames Douglas Ogilby.[16]
Cilus gilberti was named byCharles Conrad Abbott in honor of "friend and instructor" Charles Henry Gilbert, to whom Abbott’s "interest in ichthyology is wholly due".[17]
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