Samuel Wendell Williston
Samuel Wendell Williston | |
---|---|
Born | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | July 10, 1852
Died | August 30, 1918 | (aged 66)
Nationality | American |
Citizenship | United States |
Alma mater | Kansas State Agricultural College Yale University |
Known for | Allosaurus, Diplodocus, illustrations, terrestrial origin of bird flight |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Paleontology |
Institutions | Yale University University of Kansas University of Chicago |
Doctoral students | Maurice Mehl |
Signature | |
Samuel Wendell Williston (July 10, 1852 – August 30, 1918) was an American
He is remembered for Williston's law, which states that parts in an organism, such as arthropod limbs, become reduced in number and specialized in function through evolutionary history.
Early life
Williston was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Samuel Williston and Jane A. Williston
In 1874, he went on his first field fossil hunting expedition for Othniel Charles Marsh at Yale University under the mentorship of Benjamin Franklin Mudge, and led his first expedition in 1877.[2] With Mudge, Williston discovered the first fossils of the dinosaurs Allosaurus and Diplodocus. He was noted for painstakingly illustrating the finds. In 1880, he matriculated to Yale University, for several years was a post-graduate student and faculty member. Around this time, he proposed the first explicit model for the terrestrial origin of bird flight (i.e., that dinosaurs developed flight by running along the ground rather than jumping from trees).
Williston returned to Kansas in 1890, to take a position on the faculty at the University of Kansas as a professor of geology and anatomy.[1] In 1899, he was named the first Dean of the new School of Medicine there. He was also a member of the state boards of health and medical examiners. In 1902, Williston left Kansas again, and took the chair of paleontology at the University of Chicago.
Williston was a fellow of the Geological Society of America, a foreign correspondent for the London Geological and Zoölogical societies, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences,[3] a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[4] and a member of the American Philosophical Society.[5] He was president of the Kansas Academy of Science, and in 1903 became president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He was the author of several books, and the Smithsonian Institution now administers an endowment fund in his name.
Work on Diptera
Although never employed as a professional entomologist, Samuel W. Williston was a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America since 1915,[6] and was well-renowned specialist on the taxonomy and systematics of flies (Diptera). He became the first North American specialist on this group, publishing over 50 books and papers, and naming more than 1250 species. His best-known works were the three editions of the Manual of North American Diptera (1888, 1896, 1908).[7]
The Osteology of the Reptiles
In 1925, Williston published a comprehensive survey of the reptilian skeleton,[8] which was a precursor to the monumental Osteology of Reptiles by A. S. Romer.
Williston's law
Williston noticed that, over
Notes
- ^ a b Blackmar 1912.
- ^ Williston 1898.
- ^ "Samuel W. Williston". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
- ^ "Samuel Wendell Williston". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. February 9, 2023. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
- ^ "List of ESA Fellows". Entomological Society of America. Retrieved September 8, 2019.
- ^ Beckemeyer 2009.
- ^ Williston, Samuel W.; Gregory, William K. (1925). The osteology of the reptiles. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- ^ Williston, Samuel Wendell (1914). Water Reptiles of the Past and Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- PMID 31182024.
References
- Aldrich, John Merton (1918). "Samuel Wendell Williston". Entomological News. 29: 322–327.
- Beckemeyer, Roy J. (2009). "Samuel Wendell Williston — The First and Foremost Kansas Dipterist". S2CID 86197579.
- Blackmar, Frank W. (1912). Kansas; a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc., volume II. Chicago: Standard Publishing Company. p. 920.
- Lull, Richard Swann (1924). "Biographical Memoir, Samuel Wendell Williston, 1852-1918" (PDF). Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. 17 (5): 115–141.
- Osborn, Henry Fairfield (1918). "Samuel Wendell Williston 1852-1918". S2CID 129085529.
- Shimer, =Hervey Woodburn (1919). "Samuel Wendell Williston (1852-1918)". S2CID 129085529.
- Shor, Elizabeth (1971). Fossils and Flies: The Life of a Compleat Scientist Samuel Wendell Williston. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-0949-1.
External links
- Excerpts from A Brief History of Fossil Collecting in the Niobrara Chalk prior to 1900, (1898).
- Williston's Contributions to the Geological Survey of Kansas, Volume IV, from 1899.