Delbert Dwight Davis (in literature, usually just D. Dwight Davis), (30 December 1908 – 6 February 1965) was an American comparative anatomist and curator of zoology at the

Chicago Natural History Museum The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

. Davis was born in

Rockford, Illinois Rockford is a city in Winnebago County, Illinois, located in the far northern part of the state. Situated on the banks of the Rock River, Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County (a small portion of the city is located in Ogle County). ...

and was educated at North Central College, Naperville. In 1930, he joined the Chicago Natural History Museum as an assistant in osteology under

Wilfred Osgood Wilfred Hudson Osgood (December 8, 1875 – June 20, 1947) was an American zoologist. Biography Osgood was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the oldest child of a family of watchmakers. The family moved to California in 1888 and he went to study ...

. He became a curator of anatomy in 1941. He published on a range of zoological taxa from insects to mammals. He took a special interest in identifying the evolutionary relationships of the giant panda to other mammals using anatomical studies. He took over 25 years on the study and published a comprehensive book on the topic just a couple of months before his death. He visited Borneo in 1950 on a collection expedition and visited Malaya in 1962 where he worked for 9 months at the University in Kuala Lumpur. Along with Rainer Zangerl, he was involved in translating

Willi Hennig Emil Hans Willi Hennig (20 April 1913 – 5 November 1976) was a Germans, German biologist and zoologist who is considered the founder of Phylogenesis, phylogenetic systematics, otherwise known as cladistics. In 1945 as a POWs in World War II, p ...

's influential work on phylogenetics into English which was published in 1966. Davis married Charlotte and they had a son, Charles Darwin Davis.

Works

* * Schmidt KP, Davis DD (1941). ''Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada''. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 365 pp., 34 plates, 103 figures.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Delbert Dwight 20th-century American zoologists North Central College alumni Writers from Rockford, Illinois 1908 births 1965 deaths