Museum of zoology of the university of Wisconsin

The museum of zoology of the university of Wisconsin was initiated in 1848, before even the construction of the first building of the Université of Wisconsin, by the direction of this one.

History

The collections start to be gathered by Horace Addison Tenney (1820-1906) and Increase Lapham (1811-1875). In 1865, the number of specimens exceeds: 12000. Edward Asahel Birge (1851-1950) is engaged in 1875 and will make its career at the university as professor, he receives moreover the load of the cabinet of natural history. In 1894, a fire destroys the building which shelters the natural history museum. It is Birge which reconstitutes the collections and receives the assistance of Thure Ludwig Theodor Kumlien (1819-1888) for the constitution of a whole of skin of birds of the State.

George Wagner is engaged in 1913 to teach various matters of Natural history and is introduced the teaching of ecology, the genetics and of ornithology. Birge and Wagner engage several récolteurs to enrich the collections by Reptile S and Amphibien S of which Arthur Irving Ortenburger (1898-1961). The natural history museum preserves also the data gathered by Wagner and its students who carry out one of the first operations of Baguage of birds of the United States (1925-1943). It has also a collection of Mollusque S collected by Frank Collins Baker (1867-1942). The institution receives also the personal collection of skins, nests, eggs and skeletons of birds of Ludwig Kumlien (1853-1902), the son of Thure Kumlien.

Wagner will be the first to carry out the catalog of the specimens. Hartley Harrad Thompson Jackson (1881-1976), then student and creative future of the American Society off Mammalogists, assists it. Jackson will give to the natural history museum part of its collections.

John Thompson Emlen Junior (1908-1997), professor of Zoology of 1946 to 1974, directs also the natural history museum and has as a successor William Glase Reeder (1929-). The two men organize scientific voyages with their students by which harvests enrich the collections.

Source

Official site

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