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Anthony Curtiss,
pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...
of Roy Abijah Curtiss Jr (born in
Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
10 May 1910, died 12 July 1981 in
Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former cap ...
, Pakistan), also known in his later life as Muhammad Abdullah al-Hussein, was an American naturalist who wrote a short, and somewhat eccentric, book on the zoology of
Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Austr ...
.


Early life

Roy Abijah Curtiss Jr. was born on 19 May 1910 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Roy Abijah Curtiss (1880-1923), a wealthy business man who was the son and heir of Frank Curtiss former president of New York's Sixth Street Elevated Railway Society and Ethel Grace Quinn (1885-1974). His parents had married in 1907 and Roy was the oldest of their four boys. The family had an estate near Sheffield, Massachusetts and a town house on Eleventh Avenue near the
American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
(AMNH). A precocious boy, Curtiss developed an early interest in natural history, encouraged by his mother and his well traveled maternal grandmother who as well as having studied medicine was a convert to Islam. How precociousness is illustrated by his attendance at the 1919 conference of the American Ornithologists Union at the AMNH and by his mention in the ''Library Digest'' in 1921. In 1924 he published his first book, printing costs probably being met by his mother and grandmother, entitled ''An account of the natural history of New England and of Nova Scotia and lower Canada of the islands of the coasts between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of New York; of the mountains wherein in Hudson rises; and all eastward as far as the Bay of Massachusetts. in so far as it applies to beasts, birds, reptiles, whales, fresh and salt water fish and shellfish, worms, insects and pests''. Curtiss’s parents divorced in 1921 and his father died in 1923 leaving Curtiss and two of his brothers an equal share in his estate and a trust fund. One of his brothers was the writer and critic Thomas Quinn Curtiss (1915-2000) who is best known for his relationship with
Klaus Mann Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann (18 November 1906 – 21 May 1949) was a German writer and dissident. He was the son of Thomas Mann, a nephew of Heinrich Mann and brother of Erika Mann, with whom he maintained a lifelong close relationship, and Golo ...
. His other two brothers,
Sidney Curtiss Sidney Quinn Curtiss (September 4, 1917 – January 24, 1994) was an American politician who was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1949 to 1979. Early life Curtiss was born on September 4, 1917 in Sheffield, Massachuset ...
and Franklin Curtiss, were politicians in Massachusetts. There is a portrait of his mother painted by the
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
artist
Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...
(1878-1961) in 1931.


Travels and Natural History

Curtiss had traveled with his mother to France and in the late 1920s he signed on as a cook on a
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
ship. In early 1930s he journeyed to South America and in 1934 he went to Tahiti. He stayed in Tahiti for 5 years in the village of Tuatira on
Tahiti Iti Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Aust ...
, the remote and rugged southeastern peninsula of the island. He married a local girl there and donated funds to improve the infrastructure connecting Tuatira with the island’s capital,
Papeete Papeete (Tahitian language, Tahitian: ''Papeete'', pronounced ) is the capital city of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of the France, French Republic in the Pacific Ocean. The Communes of France, commune of Papeete is located on the isl ...
. While in Tuatira Curtiss collected notes on the wildlife that he found in the vicinity of Tuatira, both the land animals and the fauna of the adjacentreef sheltered shallow coastal waters. He made detailed descriptions of these, including the local name in the Tahitian language as well as putting forward new binomials for most of the animals he observed. When he did give them new names he followed the old names used by
Carolus Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...
and his contemporaries. His ''Short Zoology of Tahiti'' was published on a visit home to the United States in 1938. His zoological knowledge was sufficient that he was able to identify and classify the species but his taxonomic knowledge was very outdated as he was strongly opposed to the changes to genus names that had occurred over the two Centuries since Linnaeus’s time and many of the species described by him had, in fact, been previously described. Curtiss described more than 250 species of mammals, fishes, birds, reptiles and a variety of sea and land invertebrates. taxa, both marine and terrestrial. In all, over 250 taxa were listed by him, among which there are 210 new species. An example of his old fashioned approach to taxonomy were that all of the species of decapod he named were put within Linnaeus’s genus ''
Cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
''. A review of his book in ''
Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'' by
Leonard Peter Schultz Leonard Peter Schultz (1901–1986) was an American ichthyologist. Biography Schultz was born in 1901, at Albion, Michigan. He received education on ichthyology at Albion College, in which he got his bachelor's degree, in 1924. In 1926, he got ...
in 1940 mused that Curtiss was taking us back in time to Linnaeus’s era. One of the authors of the Zoological Review chose to ignore Curtiss’s binomials as he took the view that they did not meet the then current nomenclatural rules. Among the few scientists who referred to the work was
Henry Weed Fowler Henry Weed Fowler (March 23, 1878 – June 21, 1965) was an American zoologist born in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania. He studied at Stanford University under David Starr Jordan. He joined the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and worked as ...
in his ''Fishes of Oceania'' published in 1949. Curtiss dedicated the book to his 17 year old wife, Rai-a-Hitorea.


Return to the United States and move to Haiti

Curtiss and his family returned to the United States in 1939, settling near
Akron, New York Akron is a village in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 2,868 at the 2010 census. The name derives from the Greek word ἄκρον signifying a summit or high point. It is part of the Buffalo– Niagara Falls Metropo ...
where his intention was to write a larger volume on Tahiti’s zoology. Unfortunately, in the early months of 1940 the new family home was razed by fire and all of Curtiss’s notes and his extensive library were destroyed. Curtiss used the insurance money from the fire to finance the move of his family to Haiti where they stayed until 1950. During his time in Haiti, Curtiss published ''Further Notes on the Zoology of Tahiti''. It was while Curtiss was in Haiti that he started to observe and collect snakes and lizards, forwarding specimens to Doris Cochran at the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
in
Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
. Cochrane and Curtiss began a collegial friendship and they exchanged a number of letters. Curtiss carried out detailed and accurate observations, some of which Cochrane included in papers she authored. In 1947 Curtiss published a short note about snakes in Haiti.


Morocco and Pakistan

In 1950 Curtiss and his family returned to America settling briefly in
Germantown Germantown or German Town may refer to: Places Australia * Germantown, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region United States * Germantown, California, the former name of Artois, a census-designated place in Glenn County * Ge ...
in
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
. In 1951 he followed in his grandmother’s footsteps and became a convert to Islam and moved to Morocco, taking the name Muhammad Abdullah al-Hussein (or al-Hussainy). He wrote a handful of letters to the editor of
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
magazine from Morocco but signed these as Anthony Curtiss. He does not appear to have remained in North Africa long and had soon moved to Karachi in Pakistan. Here he retained his interest in natural history and was involved in the collection of freshwater fishes for the Humboldt Museum in Berlin, the specimens being credited to his adopted name. He remained in Pakistan until his death in Karachi on 12 July 1981. His papers and manuscript autobiography are retained in the Smithsonian Institution.


Legacy

Curtiss is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of Hispaniolan lizard, '' Celestus curtissi''. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Curtiss", p. 63).


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Curtiss, Anthony 1910 births 1981 deaths American naturalists Converts to Islam People from Brooklyn American Muslims American expatriates in Pakistan