Gill, Theodore Nicholas

Gill, Theodore Nicholas

(b. New York, N.Y., 2 I March 1837: d. Washington, D.C., 25 September 1914)

ichthyology.

His youthful interest in the Fulton Fish Market led Gill to a life’s work in fishes and other animals despite the preference of his father, James Darrell Gill, for his son to become a minister. His mother, Elizabeth Vosburgh Gill, died when the boy was nine. Visits to the market and interest in natural history continued even after Gill had begun studying law, and a scholarship from the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia enabled him to continue his preferred interests. Through William Stimpson he was introduced to Spencer F. Baird, who arranged for the Smithsonian Institution to publish Gill’s report on the fishes of New York when he was only nineteen (1856). Almost his only fieldwork was an expedition to the West Indies in 1858, when he made collections especially of the freshwater fishes of Trinidad.

Gill became librarian of the Smithsonian Institution in 1862; and when the books were given to the Library of Congress in 1866, he went with them as assistant librarian until 1874. From 1860 he held various appointments at Columbian College (now George Washington University), including that of professor of zoology from 1884 to 1910. The college recognized his merit by awarding him the M.A. (1865). M.D. (866), Ph.D. (1870), and LL.D. (1895). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, was a fellow and president (1897) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of many other scientific societies, and a founder of the Cosmos Club.

A bachelor, Gill lived and studied in cluttered offices in the Smithsonian throughout most of his scientific career. One of Baird’s close-knit coterie in the U.S. Fish Commission, he was an outstanding taxonomist and synthesizer of scientific literature. His classifications of fishes, based primarily on skeletal structure, were especially valuable at the family and order levels and formed a major basis for the classification adopted and promulgated by David Starr Jordan. Many of Gill’s papers were brief and succinct analyses of the genera of fishes, group by group. He was less keen in the recognition and description of fish species. His publications on the habits and life histories of fishes brought together the scattered observations of many workers. His taxonomic studies on birds and on mollusks have been generally superseded. Gill was unusually generous with advice and knowledge to colleagues and visitors at the Smithsonian Institution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Gill’s publications consisted of a very large number of relatively short papers (with no single extensive monograph) which constituted a major contribution, primarily to ichthyology. Dall’s biography of Gill (cited below) contains an almost complete bibliography.

II. Secondary Literature. A full account of Gill’s life and accomplishments is W. H. Dall,” in “Biographical Memoir of Theodore Nicholas Gill,” in Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences, 8 (1916), 313–343. The same account, without the bibliography, appeared in Smithsonian Report for 1916 (Washington, D.C., 1917), pp. 579–586. Brief references to Gill’s contributions to ichthyology are found in C. L. Hubbs, “History of fen in the United States After 1850,” in Copeia, in (1946–48; and in David Starr Jordan, The Days of a Man, vol. I (Yonkers, N.Y., 1922).

Elizabeth Noble Shor