Born in Norway, zoologist Leonhard Stejneger (1851-1943) left for the United States in 1881. He had already produced ornithological field notes, published a book and described his first bird, Lanius bairdi. Upon his arrival in the U.S., he began working with birds of the New World. Stejneger kept this diary during a 1900 trip to Puerto Rico and the West Indies from early February to the end of April. Most of his entries describe the events of the day with some mention of collecting birds, lizards, and bats.
Join us in transcribing this diary and get a glimpse of the day to day experiences of this noted zoologist.
Born in Norway, zoologist Leonhard Stejneger (1851-1943) left for the United States in 1881. He had already produced ornithological field notes, published a book and described his first bird, Lanius bairdi. Upon his arrival in the U.S., he began working with birds of the New World. Stejneger kept this diary during a 1900 trip to Puerto Rico and the West Indies from early February to the end of April. Most of his entries describe the events of the day with some mention of collecting birds, lizards, and bats.
Join us in transcribing this diary and get a glimpse of the day to day experiences of this noted zoologist.
Leonhard Stejneger was appointed assistant curator in the Department of Birds, United States National Museum, under curator Robert Ridgway in December 1884. In 1889, Stejneger became the first full-time curator for the Department of Reptiles and Batrachians. In 1911, he was appointed head curator of the Department of Biology. From that time until his death, Stejneger served both as head curator of the Department of Biology and curator of the Division of Reptiles and Batrachians. A long and illustrious career included expeditions and studies such as his research on fur seals and sealing conditions in the North Pacific and the Bering Sea.
Stejneger was appointed to the International Fur-Seal Commission by President Cleveland. As a representative of the United States National Museum, Stejneger attended several international scientific congresses among them the International Zoological Congresses of 1898, 1901, 1904, 1907, 1913, 1927, and 1930, as well as ornithological and fisheries congresses. He was elected to the International Committee on Zoological Nomenclature in 1898 and served as the organizing secretary for the Section on Zoogeography at the 1907 Zoological Congress.
Stejneger also made field trips to various sections of the United States and nearby areas. After joining C. Hart Merriam's biological survey of the San Francisco mountain region in 1889, he collected specimens in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In 1894, he took a field trip to the South Dakota Badlands. In 1900 he joined Charles W. Richmond, assistant curator in the Division of Birds, on an expedition to Puerto Rico and the West Indies, and during the summer of 1906 he studied the salamanders of Augusta County, Virginia.
Stejneger's bibliography contains more than four hundred titles. Of particular importance are Results of Ornithological Explorations in the Commander Islands and in Kamtschatka (1885), portions of the Standard Natural History (1885), edited by J. Sterling Kingsley, The Poisonous Snakes of North America (1895), The Russian Fur-Seal Islands (1896), Herpetology of Porto Rico (1904), and Herpetology of Japan and Adjacent Territories (1907). With the collaboration of Thomas Barbour of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Stejneger published a Check-List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles in five editions (1917, 1923, 1933, 1939, 1943).
