Karl Patterson Schmidt

Karl Patterson Schmidt (June 19, 1890 in Lake Forest, Illinois – September 26, 1957 in Chicago) was an American herpetologist.

Biography

Schmidt was the son of George W. Schmidt and Margaret Patterson Schmidt. Schmidt's father was a German professor who, at the time of Schmidt's birth, was teaching in Lake Forest, Illinois. His family left the city in 1907 and settled in Wisconsin. They worked on a farm near Stanley, Wisconsin, where his mother and his younger brother died in a fire on August 7, 1935. The brother, Franklin J. W. Schmidt, was prominent in the then new field of wildlife management.

In 1913, Schmidt entered Cornell University to study biology and geology. In 1915, he discovered his preference for herpetology during a four-month training course at the Perdee Oil Company in Louisiana. In 1916, he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts and made his first geological expedition to Santo Domingo. From 1916 to 1922, he worked as scientific assistant in herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, under the well-known American herpetologists Mary Cynthia Dickerson and Gladwyn K. Noble. He made his first collecting expedition to Puerto Rico in 1919, then became the assistant curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1922. From 1923 to 1934, he made several collecting expeditions for that museum to Central and South America, which took him to Honduras (1923), Brazil (1926) and Guatemala (1933-1934). In 1937, he became the editor of the herpetology and ichthyology journal Copeia, a post he occupied until 1949. In 1938, he served in the U.S. Army. He became the chief curator of zoology at the Field Museum in 1941, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. From 1942 to 1946, he was the president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH). In 1953, he made his last expedition, which was to Israel.

Schmidt died in 1957 after being bitten by a juvenile boomslang snake, which had been sent to his lab at the Field Museum in Chicago for identification by Marlin Perkins, who was then the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo. Schmidt underestimated the severity of the snakebite (which occurred 28 hours before his death) and, as a result, did not seek medical treatment until it was too late to counteract the effects of the boomslang's venom.

Schmidt was one of the most important herpetologists in the 20th century. Though he made only a few important discoveries by himself, he named more than 200 species. Many species are named karlschmidti in his honor. He wrote more than 200 articles and books, including Living Reptiles of the World, which became an international bestseller.

a boomslang snake bite killed Schmidt

Works (selected)

• Homes and Habits of Wild Animals (1934)
• Our Friendly Animals and When They Came (1938)
• Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada with Delbert Dwight Davis (1941)
• Principles of Animal Ecology with Warder Clyde Allee (1885-1955) and Alfred Edwards Emerson (1949)
• A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles (1953)
• Living Reptiles of the World with Robert Frederick Inger

External links

• Chrono-Biographical Sketch: Karl P. Schmidt
• Pictures of Schmidt’s fringe-toed lizard (Acanthodactylus schmidti).