Joseph Howe Wales (27 November 1907 – 21 August 2002) was an American
ichthyologist
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Octobe ...
.
Career
Joseph Howe Wales was born on 27 November 1907 in Iowa City, Iowa. At the age of 10 he moved with his parents Robert W. and Laverne Sorter Wales to Pasadena, California. In 1926, before his graduation at high school he contributed to the journal Condor where he published articles about the band-tailed pigeon and gulls.
Together with
George S. Myers
George Sprague Myers (February 2, 1905 – November 4, 1985) was an American ichthyologist who spent most of his career at Stanford University. He served as the editor of ''Stanford Ichthyological Bulletin'' as well as president of the American So ...
he collected three specimens of the now extinct
Ash Meadows killifish in 1930. In the same year he graduated to Bachelor of Arts and in 1932 to Master of Arts at the
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. In 1934 he received his Ph.D. After a diving trip to
Devils Hole he wrote the scientific description to the previously unrecognized
Devil's Hole pupfish
The Devils Hole pupfish (''Cyprinodon diabolis'') is a critically endangered species of the family Cyprinodontidae (pupfishes) found only in Devils Hole, a water-filled cavern in the US state of Nevada. It was first described as a species in ...
.
In 1935, he married Elizabeth Bangle, a mate from Stanford. He later worked as biological surveyor at the Bureau of Fish Conservation, California Division of Fish and Game in San Francisco, California,
[California Fish and Game Volume 29, San Francisco, 1942] as District fisheries biologist in
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta ( Shasta: ''Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki''; Karuk: ''Úytaahkoo'') is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. At an elevation of , it is the second-highest peak in the Cascades ...
,
for the California Trout Investigation and at the California fish hatcheries. From 1959 to 1979 he served as Associate Professor of Food Science and Technology and pathologist at the
Oregon State University
Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...
, where he analyzed liver cancer in rainbow trouts.
As a pastime Wales and his wife bred
Thoroughbred horses at their residence at Mount Shasta. Wales was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Fisheries Society.
He died in
Corvallis, Oregon
Corvallis ( ) is a city and the county seat of Benton County in central western Oregon, United States. It is the principal city of the Corvallis, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Benton County. As of the 2020 United ...
on 21 August 2002.
Selected works
*1932: Life History of the Blue Rockfish ''Sebastodes mystinus''
*1959: Trout of California
*1972: Essential Fatty Acids in the Diet of Rainbow Trout (''Salmo gairdneri''): Physiological Symptoms of EFA Deficiency (w/ J D Castell, R O Sinnhuber, and D J Lee)
*1983: Microscopic Anatomy of Salmonids (with William T. Yasutake)
*
*
*
Taxon described by him
*See
:Taxa named by Joseph Howe Wales
References
External links
Stanford Magazine obituaries
1907 births
2002 deaths
American ichthyologists
Oregon State University faculty
People from Pasadena, California
Stanford University alumni
20th-century American zoologists
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