Chamberlin, Ralph V.

Autor: Chamberlin, Ralph V.
Rok: 1879-1967

Biogr./Hist. údaje: Americký zoolog.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

Ralph Vary Chamberlin (January 3, 1879 – October 31, 1967) was an American biologist, ethnographer, and historian from Salt Lake City, Utah. Educated in Utah, and then at Cornell, he was a faculty member of the University of Utah for over 25 years, where he served as the first dean of the School of Medicine and later as head 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, becoming a recognized authority on both. He described over 1,400 species of spiders, 1,000 species of millipedes, and the majority of North American centipedes. He ranks among the most prolific arachnologists and myriapodologists in history, 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. 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 (LDS Church). 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".