TURNER, CHARLES HENRY

(b. Cincinnati, Ohio, 3 February 1867;

d. Chicago, Illinois, 14 February 1923), zoology, invertebrate learning, education.

Turner was the first African American scientist interested in the comparative analysis of behavior. He made fundamental contributions in the areas of vertebrate and invertebrate morphology, naturalistic observation, apparatus design, death feigning, and invertebrate learning. He was an early leader in the civil rights movement, contributing several seminal papers on race relations.

Life. Turner received the majority of his education in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Woodard High School and graduated valedictorian. Following his marriage to Leontine Troy in 1887, he earned both his BS and MS degrees in 1891 and 1892, respectively, under the direction of his mentor Clarence L. Herrick of the University of Cincinnati. Upon graduation, he held a number of appointments at various high schools in the southern United States and at Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia, before settling at Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1908, where he remained until his retirement precipitated by illness in 1922.

Turner earned his PhD in zoology, magna cum laude, at the University of Chicago in 1907. He died of myocarditis in the home of the younger of his two sons, Darwin Romanes Turner, a successful pharmacist in Chicago, Illinois. Turner’s eldest son, Henry Owen Turner, assisted his younger brother in operating the pharmacy; there was also a daughter, Louisa Mae Turner. Turner’s first wife, Leontine Troy, died in 1895, and in 1907 or 1908 (exact year not known) he married Lillian Porter.

During a career that spanned thirty-three years, Turner published at least seventy-one papers. This number compares favorably with his white male and female

peers and is made more remarkable because Turner had no formal laboratory resources, no access to research libraries, no undergraduate or graduate students, and no university appointment; most of his contributions were made as a high school science teacher. Turner’s work was favorably recognized by leaders of the animal behavior movement and by leaders of the civil rights movement. In 1910, the French naturalist Victor Cornetz named the exploratory circling movements of ants “tournoiement de Turner” and in 1912 W. E. B. DuBois selected Turner as one of the Crisis magazine’s “Men of the Month.”

The Charles Henry Turner Open Air School for Crippled Children was established in St. Louis in 1925, and in 1954 the school became the Charles Henry Turner Middle Branch, which in 1999 became part of the Charles Henry Turner MEGA Magnet Middle School. In 1962, Turner-Tanner Hall was dedicated at Clark College in Atlanta and in 2002 the Animal Behavior Society created an annual Charles H. Turner Poster Session and Travel Award for undergraduates.

Morphology and Anatomy. Turner began his career by continuing a line of research begun by his mentor. He contributed original articles on the comparative anatomy of the pigeon brain, directly compared the brains of arthropods and annelids, and studied the mushroom bodies of crayfish. His work with pigeons is a fine example of the skills in dissection, histology, observation, drawing, and analysis that were to characterize his career. In addition to the morphological contributions, the pigeon work contains several unique contributions, including the description of a new tool to handle delicate tissue, the development of a new stain, and the suggestion that the compactness of the avian brain can be used as a taxonomic indicator. This work was even more remarkable because he did it while an undergraduate in 1891.

Insect Navigation. A second line of research attempted to answer the question of how insects navigate. There were several competing theories suggesting insects navigate by a homing instinct, tropism, limited learning ability, or higher intelligence. He designed an elaborate maze for ants, and using controls now known to be important in excluding alternative explanations (such as using heat filters with a light stimulus) and employing replicates of his observations, Turner demonstrated that ants navigate not by tropism or instinct but by using cues presented in the environment and by using higher intelligence. This work was also unique because it was among the first to investigate the influence of sex and age differences. Turner

extended his navigation work to other invertebrates, including honey bees, wasps, and caterpillars.

His work on navigation suggested that insects possess “higher intelligence” or what we now call learning. Turner embarked on an ambitious research program investigating learning in a wide range of invertebrates. This required him to construct various apparatuses for both laboratory work and fieldwork. His major contributions include the first conclusive demonstrations that honeybees learn color and pattern discriminations, that cockroaches learn in a variety of situations, and that learning survives molting. Of particular interest are his experiments on the ability of moths to hear sound. The initial paper provided the first data that moths can hear and the second provided what might very well be the first demonstration of Pavlovian conditioning in an insect.

Other Interests. Another interest of Turner’s was the ability of insects to play “possum.” His results with ant lions, known colloquially as doodlebugs, indicated that such behavior is based not on learning but rather on what he termed “terror paralysis.” These experiments were unique because of the many parameters that were investigated such as the relative duration of death feints, stimulus intensity, and hunger. The experiments also provided some of the earliest behavioral descriptions of ant lions. Behavioral description was a recurrent interest of Turner. He provided descriptions of a wide variety of invertebrates, including the microorganisms of Cincinnati, where he discovered a new species.

Turner maintained a lifelong interest in civil rights. His first paper on the topic appeared early in his career. In this, and other papers, he argued that prejudice can be studied through the science of comparative psychology and proposed that only through education can problems between the races be resolved.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY TURNER

“Morphology of the Avian Brain.” Journal of Comparative Neurology 1 (1891): 39–93, 107–133, 265–286.

“Notes upon the Cladocera, Copepoda, Ostracoda and Rotifera of Cincinnati, with Descriptions of New Species.” Bulletin of the Scientific Laboratories of Denison University 6, part 2 (1892): 57–74 and plates.

“Reason for Teaching Biology in Negro School.” Southwestern Christian Advocate 32 (1897): 2.

“A Preliminary Paper on the Comparative Study of the Arthropod and Annelid Brain.” Zoological Bulletin 2 (1899): 155–160.

“Will the Education of the Negro Solve the Race Problem.” In Twentieth Century Negro Literature: A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro, edited by W. Culp. Naperville, IL: J. L. Nichols, 1902.

“The Homing of Ants: An Experimental Study of Ant Behavior.” Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 17 (1907): 367–434.

“Experiments on Color Vision of the Honey Bee.” Biological Bulletin 19 (1910): 257–279.

“Experiments on Pattern-Vision of the Honey Bee.” Biological Bulletin 21 (1911): 249–264.

“Behavior of the Common Roach (Periplaneta orientalis L.) on an Open Maze.” Biological Bulletin 25 (1913): 348–365.

“An Experimental Study of the Auditory Powers of the Giant Silkworm Moths (Saturniidae).” Biological Bulletin 27 (1914): 325–332.

OTHER SOURCES

Abramson, C. I., L. D. Jackson, and C. L. Fuller, eds. Selected Papers and Biography of Charles Henry Turner (1867–1923), Pioneer of Comparative Animal Behavior Studies. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2003. Contains a wide range of Turner’s papers, and bibliographic material from several sources including a chapter by Charles Henry Turner II.

“Charles Henry Turner: Contributions of a Forgotten African-American to Scientific Research.” Available from http://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnermain.html. This site contains a brief biography of Turner, a time line of significant events, a bibliography, and rare family photographs.

Ross, Michael Elsohn. Bug Watching with Charles Henry Turner, illustrated by Laurie A. Caple. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books, 1997. This book is written for children and contains a nice biography and instructions on how to perform some of Turner’s experiments.

Charles I. Abramson