Up for auction a RARE! "Invertebrate Zoologist" Addison Emery Verrill Hand Written Letter. This item is authenticated By Todd
Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.
ES-3812
Addison
Emery Verrill (February 9, 1839
ā December 10, 1926) was an American invertebrate zoologist, museum curator and
university professor. Verrill was born on February 9, 1839 in Greenwood, Maine, the son of George Washington Verrill and
Lucy (Hillborn) Verrill. As a boy he showed an early interest in natural
history, building collections of rocks and minerals, plants, shells, insects
and other animals. When he moved with his family to Norway, Maine at age fourteen he attended secondary
school at the Norway Liberal Institute. Verrill
started college in 1859 at Harvard University and
studied under Louis Agassiz. He
graduated in 1862 with a B.A. He went on scientific collecting trips with Alpheus Hyatt and Nathaniel Shaler in the summer of 1860 to Trenton Point, Maine and Mount Desert Island and in the summer of 1861 to Anticosti Island and Labrador.[3] In 1864 Verrill made reports on mining, or
prospective mining, properties in New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania Two
years after graduation from Harvard, he accepted a position as Yale University's Sheffield Scientific
School first Professor of Zoology, and taught there from 1864 until his
retirement in 1907.In 1861 while under the guidance of Louis Agassiz at Harvard
he was sent to Washington D.C. to obtain specimens from the Smithsonian institution and
promote friendly relations and interest between the scientific men of Washington
and those of the Harvard Museum of Comparative
Zoology. Under the direction of Spencer Fullerton Baird,
Verrill spent almost three months working on the coral collections of the
Smithsonian. The process of overhauling the collection required identifying
various species, selecting type specimens and making up a set of duplicates to
be sent back north to Harvard. While in Washington he became acquainted with
many scientists and formed lifelong friendships with a number of them. The
friendship that Verrill and Baird developed, led to the appointment of Verrill
as assistant to the Commissioner of Fish and
Fisheries in 1871. In this role, which he held till 1887,
Verrill was responsible for marine investigations and all invertebrate
collections. The estimated several hundred thousand specimens collected
between 1871 and 1887 were sent to New Haven for Verrill to sort, identify,
catalogue and label As partial compensation for his work, after the first
set of type specimens was sent to the Smithsonian, he was allowed to keep the
first set of duplicates as personal property. Upon retirement he sold this
personal collection to the Yale Peabody Museum of
Natural History, where they now form part of the Invertebrate
Zoology collection. Between 1868ā70 he was professor of comparative anatomy and entomology in the University of Wisconsin.
From 1860 Verrill investigated the invertebrate fauna of the Atlantic coast, with special reference to the corals, annelids, echinoderms, and mollusks, and became the chief authority on the living cephalopods, especially the giant squid of the North Atlantic. His Report
upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound (1874), with Sidney Irving Smith, whose
sister he married, is a standard manual of the marine zoology of southern New England.In later life he explored with his students
the geology and marine animals of the Bermuda Islands. Besides many memoirs and articles on the subjects mentioned above, he
published The Bermuda Islands (1903; second edition, 1907). Verrill published more than 350 papers and
monographs, and described more than 1,000 species of animals in virtually every
major taxonomy group. He was a member of the Connecticut
Academy of Arts and Sciences.In 1959, Yale's Peabody Museum
established the Addison Emery Verrill
Medal, awarded for achievement in the natural sciences.