Charles Pickering (naturalist)
Charles Pickering (November 10, 1805 – March 17, 1878) was an American naturalist, curator, author, and physician.[1]
Biography
Born on Starucca Creek, Upper Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, the grandson of Colonel Timothy Pickering, after the death of his father he was raised in the house of his esteemed grandfather in Wenham, Massachusetts. Despite his part in the student rebellion of 1823, he received a medical degree from Harvard University in 1826.[1] A practicing physician in Philadelphia, he became active as librarian and curator at the city's Academy of Natural Sciences.
Pickering went with the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 as one of its naturalists. Charles Wilkes, the expedition's commander, named Pickering Passage in honor of Charles Pickering.[2] His journal of the Expedition was a major influence on Wilkes' Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition.
From 1842-43, Pickering curated the collection from the Wilkes Expedition, which was housed at the Patent Office in Washington DC, these collections were to form the foundation of the Smithsonian Institution.[3]
Pickering was a polygenist, he believed that different races had been created separately. In 1843, he traveled to the Middle East, Zanzibar and India to continue his research for his book on the Races of Man. In 1848, Pickering published Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution, which enumerated eleven races.
He later moved to Boston, where he resumed his medical practice, and eventually died on March 17, 1878.[4]
He was married to Sarah Stoddard Pickering, who posthumously published his final work. He was an associate of many important figures in America's intellectual landscape, including Asa Gray, Horatio Hale, James Dwight Dana and Louis Agassiz.
A subspecies of North American garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis pickeringii, is named in his honor.[5]
Books
- Pickering, Charles (1863). The geographical distribution of animals and plants (United States exploring expedition, 1838-1842, under the command of Charles Wilkes). Trübner and Company.
- Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution (1848)
- Geographical Distribution of Animals and Plants (1854)
- Geographical Distribution of Plants (1861)
- Chronological History of Plants: Man's Record of His Own Existence Illustrated through Their Names, Uses, and Companionship (1879)
See also
References
- ^ a b Kelly, Howard A.; Burrage, Walter L. (eds.). "Pickering, Charles" . American Medical Biographies . Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company.
- ^ Phillips, James W. (1971). Washington State Place Names. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95158-3.
- ^ Philbrick, Nathaniel. "The Scientific Legacy of the U.S. Exploring Expedition." http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/usexex/learn/philbrick.htm}[permanent dead link]
- ^ Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society.
- ^ Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Pickering", p. 207).
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Pickering.
- v
- t
- e
- Louis Agassiz
- John Baker
- Erwin Baur
- John Beddoe
- Robert Bennett Bean
- François Bernier
- Renato Biasutti
- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
- Franz Boas
- Daniel Garrison Brinton
- Paul Broca
- Alice Mossie Brues
- Halfdan Bryn
- Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
- Charles Caldwell
- Petrus Camper
- Samuel A. Cartwright
- Houston Stewart Chamberlain
- Sonia Mary Cole
- Carleton S. Coon
- Georges Cuvier
- Jan Czekanowski
- Charles Davenport
- Joseph Deniker
- Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt
- Anténor Firmin
- Eugen Fischer
- Francis Galton
- Stanley Marion Garn
- Reginald Ruggles Gates
- George Gliddon
- Arthur de Gobineau
- Madison Grant
- John Grattan
- Hans F. K. Günther
- Ernst Haeckel
- Frederick Ludwig Hoffman
- Earnest Hooton
- Julian Huxley
- Thomas Henry Huxley
- Calvin Ira Kephart
- Robert Knox
- Robert E. Kuttner
- Georges Vacher de Lapouge
- Fritz Lenz
- Carl Linnaeus
- Cesare Lombroso
- Bertil Lundman
- Felix von Luschan
- Dominick McCausland
- John Mitchell
- Ashley Montagu
- Lewis H. Morgan
- Samuel George Morton
- Josiah C. Nott
- Karl Pearson
- Roger Pearson
- Oscar Peschel
- Isaac La Peyrère
- Charles Pickering
- Ludwig Hermann Plate
- Alfred Ploetz
- James Cowles Prichard
- Otto Reche
- Gustaf Retzius
- William Z. Ripley
- Alfred Rosenberg
- Benjamin Rush
- Henric Sanielevici
- Heinrich Schmidt
- Ilse Schwidetzky
- Charles Gabriel Seligman
- Giuseppe Sergi
- Samuel Stanhope Smith
- Herbert Spencer
- Morris Steggerda
- Lothrop Stoddard
- William Graham Sumner
- Thomas Griffith Taylor
- Paul Topinard
- John H. Van Evrie
- Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
- Alexander Winchell
- Ludwig Woltmann
- An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People
in Different Climates (1744) - The Outline of History of Mankind (1785)
- Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question (1849)
- An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855)
- The Races of Europe (Ripley, 1899)
- The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899)
- Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (1907)
- Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911)
- Castes in India (1916)
- The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
- The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)
- The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930)
- Annihilation of Caste (1936)
- The Races of Europe (Coon, 1939)
- An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus (1943)
- The Race Question (1950)
External links
- Works on Archive.org
- Bio at Harvard University