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. Davis was born in Rockford, Illinois and was educated at

North Central College North Central College is a private college in Naperville, Illinois. It is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and has nearly 70 areas of study in undergraduate majors, minors, and programs through 19 academic departments organized in thre ...

, Naperville. In 1930, he joined the Chicago Natural History Museum as an assistant in osteology under Wilfred Osgood. 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 German biologist and zoologist who is considered the founder of phylogenetic systematics, otherwise known as cladistics. In 1945 as a prisoner of war, Hennig began work on his the ...

'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