Philip Hershkovitz
Encyclopedia
Philip Hershkovitz was an American mammalogist
. Born in Pittsburgh, he attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Michigan and lived in South America collecting mammals. In 1947, he was appointed a curator
at the Field Museum of Natural History
in Chicago and he continued to work there until his death. He has published much on the mammals of the Neotropics, particularly primates and rodents, and described almost 70 new species and subspecies of mammals. About a dozen species have been named after him.
in 1927, he attended the University of Pittsburgh
from 1929 to 1931, majoring in zoology
, before transferring to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which had more course offerings in zoology. He was an assistant in the zoology department and did taxidermical
work. In 1932, he went to Texas to collect Typhlomolge rathbuni cave salamanders. He wanted to also trap small mammals, which he found more interesting, but had no traps to do that. On a chance visit to the Field Museum of Natural History
(FMNH) in Chicago, he befriended the Curator of Mammals there, Colin Campbell Sanborn, who loaned him the supplies he needed. This event was the beginning of Hershkovitz's long relationship with the FMNH.
As the Great Depression
worsened, Hershkovitz was no longer able to afford life in Michigan, and in 1933 he decided to move to Ecuador
, which he was told was one of the cheapest countries in the Americas to live in. He collected a number of mammal specimens and learned to speak Spanish, supporting himself in part by trading in horses. He returned in 1937 and again enrolled at Ann Arbor, graduating in 1938. Subsequently, he became a graduate student there and got his MSc
degree in 1940. He then entered the doctoral program, but in 1941 he was awarded a Walter Rathbone Bacon Traveling Scholarship by the United States National Museum in Washington, D.C., to work in the Santa Marta
area of northern Colombia, where he stayed till 1943.
Hershkovitz enlisted in the U.S. Armed Services during World War II and served the Office of Strategic Services
in Europe. In 1946, he married Anne Marie Pierrette Dode, whom he had met in France, and the same year he returned to America to continue his Bacon Scholarship studies in Washington, D.C., where his first child of three—Francine, Michael, and Mark—was born in 1946.
of which he had found representatives in Colombia.
He had a good relationship with Chief Curator of the Department of Zoology Karl P. Schmidt and actively took care of his curatorial duties(appointed Associate Curator in 1954 and full Curator in 1956). Schmidt retired in 1957 and his successor, Austin P. Rand, enjoyed a less positive relation with Hershkovitz, and the latter detached himself from the Museum's day-to-day affairs. Ultimately, in 1962, Hershkovitz was replaced as Curator of Mammals by Joseph Moore
and took the unprecedented title of Research Curator. He worked in the field in Surinam in 1960–61 and in Bolivia
in 1965–66.
was published for him under the title Studies in Neotropical Mammalogy: Essays in Honor of Philip Hershkovitz, an honor that had been given to only three previous Field Museum scientists.It included papers on some of the fields Hershkovitz had worked in, a biography and bibliography of him by Bruce Patterson, and a review, written by Hershkovitz himself, of the historical development of mammalogy in the Neotropics. By 1987, he was still tireless, spending long days in the museum without even pausing for lunch. He worked in Brazil on several occasions, the last in 1992, after which his health prevented him from going. He died from complications resulting from bone cancer at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital
in Chicago on 15 February 1997, at the age of 87; he continued to work on his mammalogical research until two weeks before his death. He was survived by two sons, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren.
of Neotropical mammals, focusing generally on taxonomy
and biogeography
. He wrote 164 papers, including both broad monograph
s and smaller contributions, and described 67 new species and subspecies and 13 new genera
. He was an independent researcher, writing most of his contributions alone; only three he co-authored with other scientists. He participated in some fiery scientific debates, with views that according to Patterson's biographical note "brand him as something other than conciliatory or diplomatic". In 1968, he published his theory of metachromism, which attempts to explain variation in fur coloration among mammals through the loss of one of two classes of pigment
s in the hairs.
Hershkovitz may have been most well known for his studies of primates, to the extent that many thought him a primatologist, but he was quick to point out that, as Patterson phrases it, "nothing could be further from the truth". He had published on primates earlier, but did not give them special attention until the 1960s, when grant opportunities persuaded him to begin studying them, first Callitrichidae and later Cebidae. In 1977, he published a review of callitrichids that according to Ronald H. Pine was "the most heroically monumental revisionary monograph ever devoted to a Neotropical group"; it was to be the first volume of a comprehensive treatment of living New World monkeys. He continued with smaller-scale papers on cebids and assembled notes to continue his series on living New World monkeys, but eventually financial support ceased and Hershkovitz was relieved to be able to spend the last decade of his life studying the mammals that most "intrigued and animated" him—rodents and marsupials.
One of Hershkovitz's first papers was on rodents, describing two new Ecuadorean squirrels in 1938, and he continued to publish about the group, including reviews of Nectomys
, Oecomys
, Phyllotini, Holochilus
, and scapteromyines between 1944 and 1966. He played an important role in formalizing and defining the tribal
groups within the sigmodontine
rodents of South America. However, his contributions at the time have been cited as examples of "vague notions of clade recognition", "phylogenetic transcendentalism" unsubstantiated by data, and "[misleading simplification] of a complex reality". He was engaged in discussions on the significance of penis morphology in sigmodontines and on their origin. Over eighty years old, he resumed studies of rodents in Brazil and discovered many additional new species. Shortly after his death, head of the FMNH's mammal division Lawrence Heaney said "The information he gathered was the basis for much of the conservation planning that's being done now in most of the major habitats in South America."
In 1966, he published a Catalog of Living Whales; he had originally intended to review the whales living off the South American coast, but expanded the project to all the world's species. This Catalog remains an invaluable resource for any student of cetaceans who needs to know the meaning of some obscure old name and has been called "a taxonomic Rosetta Stone". Although Hershkovitz was not a marine mammalogist, a brief obituary on him appeared in Marine Mammals Science in 1998. He treated many other mammals in his publications, including reviews of marsupials such as Gracilinanus
, Philander, and Dromiciops, the tapir
s of the Americas, some of the cottontail rabbits of South America, and also published extensively on nomenclature
.
in 1977. In 1988, he was the Honorary President of the XIIth Congress of the International Primatological Society
. In 1991, the American Society of Primatologists
named him a Distinguished Primatologist and the American Society of Mammalogists
awarded him Honorary Membership.
Several animals have been named in honor of Hershkovitz:
Mammalogy
In zoology, mammalogy is the study of mammals – a class of vertebrates with characteristics such as homeothermic metabolism, fur, four-chambered hearts, and complex nervous systems...
. Born in Pittsburgh, he attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Michigan and lived in South America collecting mammals. In 1947, he was appointed a curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
at the Field Museum of Natural History
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
in Chicago and he continued to work there until his death. He has published much on the mammals of the Neotropics, particularly primates and rodents, and described almost 70 new species and subspecies of mammals. About a dozen species have been named after him.
Early life
Philip Hershkovitz was born 12 October 1909 in Pittsburgh to parents Aba and Bertha (Halpern) Hershkovitz. He was the second child and only son among four siblings. He reported that his father died when he was nine years old. After graduating from Schenley High SchoolSchenley High School
Schenley High School is both a public school building and a school program that closed with the graduating class of 2011. Schenley High School is located in the North Oakland neighborhood at the edge of the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. In 2008 the school's staff and...
in 1927, he attended the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
from 1929 to 1931, majoring in zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, before transferring to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which had more course offerings in zoology. He was an assistant in the zoology department and did taxidermical
Taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
work. In 1932, he went to Texas to collect Typhlomolge rathbuni cave salamanders. He wanted to also trap small mammals, which he found more interesting, but had no traps to do that. On a chance visit to the Field Museum of Natural History
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
(FMNH) in Chicago, he befriended the Curator of Mammals there, Colin Campbell Sanborn, who loaned him the supplies he needed. This event was the beginning of Hershkovitz's long relationship with the FMNH.
As the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
worsened, Hershkovitz was no longer able to afford life in Michigan, and in 1933 he decided to move to Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, which he was told was one of the cheapest countries in the Americas to live in. He collected a number of mammal specimens and learned to speak Spanish, supporting himself in part by trading in horses. He returned in 1937 and again enrolled at Ann Arbor, graduating in 1938. Subsequently, he became a graduate student there and got his MSc
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
degree in 1940. He then entered the doctoral program, but in 1941 he was awarded a Walter Rathbone Bacon Traveling Scholarship by the United States National Museum in Washington, D.C., to work in the Santa Marta
Santa Marta
Santa Marta is the capital city of the Colombian department of Magdalena in the Caribbean Region. It was founded in July 29, 1525 by the Spanish conqueror Rodrigo de Bastidas, which makes it the oldest remaining city in Colombia...
area of northern Colombia, where he stayed till 1943.
Hershkovitz enlisted in the U.S. Armed Services during World War II and served the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
in Europe. In 1946, he married Anne Marie Pierrette Dode, whom he had met in France, and the same year he returned to America to continue his Bacon Scholarship studies in Washington, D.C., where his first child of three—Francine, Michael, and Mark—was born in 1946.
Curator at the Field Museum
In 1947, Hershkovitz was offered a position as Assistant Curator of Mammals at the FMNH and accepted, although it meant that he was unable to complete his doctoral studies. He immediately went back to the field and stayed in Colombia untilhis curatorial duties called him back to Chicago in 1952. His Colombian collections remained at the center of his research interests afterward, as he entirely revised many taxaTaxon
|thumb|270px|[[African elephants]] form a widely-accepted taxon, the [[genus]] LoxodontaA taxon is a group of organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement...
of which he had found representatives in Colombia.
He had a good relationship with Chief Curator of the Department of Zoology Karl P. Schmidt and actively took care of his curatorial duties(appointed Associate Curator in 1954 and full Curator in 1956). Schmidt retired in 1957 and his successor, Austin P. Rand, enjoyed a less positive relation with Hershkovitz, and the latter detached himself from the Museum's day-to-day affairs. Ultimately, in 1962, Hershkovitz was replaced as Curator of Mammals by Joseph Moore
Joseph Moore
Joseph Moore or Joe Moore may refer to:*Joseph Moore , mediator between US and the Western Confederacy at Sandusky, Ohio in 1793*Joseph B. Moore , Michigan Supreme Court justice...
and took the unprecedented title of Research Curator. He worked in the field in Surinam in 1960–61 and in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
in 1965–66.
Retirement and death
Hershkovitz retired in 1974, but continued his research unabated as Curator Emeritus, and in 1980–81 he worked in the field in Peru. In 1987, a festschriftFestschrift
In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...
was published for him under the title Studies in Neotropical Mammalogy: Essays in Honor of Philip Hershkovitz, an honor that had been given to only three previous Field Museum scientists.It included papers on some of the fields Hershkovitz had worked in, a biography and bibliography of him by Bruce Patterson, and a review, written by Hershkovitz himself, of the historical development of mammalogy in the Neotropics. By 1987, he was still tireless, spending long days in the museum without even pausing for lunch. He worked in Brazil on several occasions, the last in 1992, after which his health prevented him from going. He died from complications resulting from bone cancer at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Northwestern Memorial Hospital is one of the nation's preeminent academic medical centers and is the primary teaching hospital for Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. It is the second tallest hospital in the United States and the fourth tallest hospital in the world...
in Chicago on 15 February 1997, at the age of 87; he continued to work on his mammalogical research until two weeks before his death. He was survived by two sons, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren.
Research
Hershkovitz published extensively on the biology of each of the twelve ordersOrder (biology)
In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...
of Neotropical mammals, focusing generally on taxonomy
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...
and biogeography
Biogeography
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...
. He wrote 164 papers, including both broad monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s and smaller contributions, and described 67 new species and subspecies and 13 new genera
Genera
Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...
. He was an independent researcher, writing most of his contributions alone; only three he co-authored with other scientists. He participated in some fiery scientific debates, with views that according to Patterson's biographical note "brand him as something other than conciliatory or diplomatic". In 1968, he published his theory of metachromism, which attempts to explain variation in fur coloration among mammals through the loss of one of two classes of pigment
Pigment
A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...
s in the hairs.
Hershkovitz may have been most well known for his studies of primates, to the extent that many thought him a primatologist, but he was quick to point out that, as Patterson phrases it, "nothing could be further from the truth". He had published on primates earlier, but did not give them special attention until the 1960s, when grant opportunities persuaded him to begin studying them, first Callitrichidae and later Cebidae. In 1977, he published a review of callitrichids that according to Ronald H. Pine was "the most heroically monumental revisionary monograph ever devoted to a Neotropical group"; it was to be the first volume of a comprehensive treatment of living New World monkeys. He continued with smaller-scale papers on cebids and assembled notes to continue his series on living New World monkeys, but eventually financial support ceased and Hershkovitz was relieved to be able to spend the last decade of his life studying the mammals that most "intrigued and animated" him—rodents and marsupials.
One of Hershkovitz's first papers was on rodents, describing two new Ecuadorean squirrels in 1938, and he continued to publish about the group, including reviews of Nectomys
Nectomys
Nectomys is a genus of rodent in the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae. It is closely related to Amphinectomys and was formerly considered congeneric with Sigmodontomys...
, Oecomys
Oecomys
Oecomys is a genus of rodent within the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae. It contains about 17 species, which live in trees and are distributed across forested parts of South America, extending into Panama and Trinidad.-Literature cited:...
, Phyllotini, Holochilus
Holochilus
Holochilus is a genus of semiaquatic rodents in the tribe Oryzomyini of family Cricetidae, sometimes called marsh rats. It contains three living species, Holochilus brasiliensis, Holochilus chacarius, and Holochilus sciureus, which are widely distributed in South America east of the Andes, and a...
, and scapteromyines between 1944 and 1966. He played an important role in formalizing and defining the tribal
Tribe (biology)
In biology, a tribe is a taxonomic rank between family and genus. It is sometimes subdivided into subtribes.Some examples include the tribes: Canini, Acalypheae, Hominini, Bombini, and Antidesmeae.-See also:* Biological classification* Rank...
groups within the sigmodontine
Sigmodontinae
The subfamily Sigmodontinae is one of the most diverse groups of mammals. It includes New World rats and mice, with at least 376 species. Many authorities include the Neotominae and Tylomyinae as part of a larger definition of Sigmodontinae. When those genera are included, the species count...
rodents of South America. However, his contributions at the time have been cited as examples of "vague notions of clade recognition", "phylogenetic transcendentalism" unsubstantiated by data, and "[misleading simplification] of a complex reality". He was engaged in discussions on the significance of penis morphology in sigmodontines and on their origin. Over eighty years old, he resumed studies of rodents in Brazil and discovered many additional new species. Shortly after his death, head of the FMNH's mammal division Lawrence Heaney said "The information he gathered was the basis for much of the conservation planning that's being done now in most of the major habitats in South America."
In 1966, he published a Catalog of Living Whales; he had originally intended to review the whales living off the South American coast, but expanded the project to all the world's species. This Catalog remains an invaluable resource for any student of cetaceans who needs to know the meaning of some obscure old name and has been called "a taxonomic Rosetta Stone". Although Hershkovitz was not a marine mammalogist, a brief obituary on him appeared in Marine Mammals Science in 1998. He treated many other mammals in his publications, including reviews of marsupials such as Gracilinanus
Gracilinanus
Gracilinanus is a genus of opossum in the family Didelphidae. It was separated from the genus Marmosa in 1989, and has since had the genus Cryptonanus removed from it...
, Philander, and Dromiciops, the tapir
Tapir
A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...
s of the Americas, some of the cottontail rabbits of South America, and also published extensively on nomenclature
Biological classification
Biological classification, or scientific classification in biology, is a method to group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species. Biological classification is part of scientific taxonomy....
.
Honors
Hershkovitz was made a corresponding member of The Explorers ClubThe Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is a professional society dedicated to scientific exploration of Earth, its oceans, and outer space. Founded in 1904 in New York City, it currently has 30 branches world wide...
in 1977. In 1988, he was the Honorary President of the XIIth Congress of the International Primatological Society
International Primatological Society
International Primatological Society is a scientific, educational, and charitable organization focused on non-human primates. It encourages scientific research in all areas of study, facilitates international cooperation among researchers, and promote primate conservation.Together with the IUCN...
. In 1991, the American Society of Primatologists
American Society of Primatologists
The American Society of Primatologists is both an educational and scientific society which aims to promote both the discovery and exchange of information on non-human primates. The society is open to anybody who actively, or is more passively interested in scientific primatology, or anyone who is...
named him a Distinguished Primatologist and the American Society of Mammalogists
American Society of Mammalogists
The American Society of Mammalogists was founded in 1919. Its primary purpose is to encourage the study of mammals and professions studying mammals. There are over 4,500 members of this society, and they are primarily professional scientists who emphasize the importance of public policy and...
awarded him Honorary Membership.
Several animals have been named in honor of Hershkovitz:
- the bird Tinamus osgoodi hershkovitzi Blake, 1953
- the batfly genus Hershkovitzia Guimarães and D'Andretta, 1956
- the pocket mouse Heteromys anomalus hershkovitzi Hernandez-Camacho, 1956
- the Colombian weasel Mustela felipei Izor and de la Torre, 1978
- the night monkey Aotus hershkovitzi Ramírez-Cerqueira, 1983 (now a junior synonym for A. lemurinus)
- the field mouse Abrothrix hershkovitzi (Patterson et al., 1984)
- the fossil primate Mohanamico hershkovitzi Luchterhand et al., 1986
- the tick Saimirioptes hershkovitzi O'Connor, 1987
- the fossil swamp rat Scapteromys hershkovitzi Reig, 1994
- the chewing louse Eutrichophilus hershkovitzi Timm and Price, 1994
- the fossil rodent Bensonomys hershkovitzi Martin et al., 2002