Robert Edwards Carter Stearns (1 February 1827,

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

– 27 July 1909, Los Angeles) was an American

conchologist Conchology () is the study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of molluscs; however, malacology is the study of molluscs as whole organisms, whereas conchology is confined to the study of their shells. It includ ...

. Robert Stearns was passionate about natural history in his youth. Later he specialised in conchology, especially that of the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...

. He was a member of the Fisheries Commission (1882–1884) and Secretary of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

(Berkeley) (1874–1882). He became Assistant Curator of Molluscs at the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

(1885–1892). Stearns married Mary Ann Libby on 28 March 1850. They had one child, a daughter.

References

*Biography by Gerald J. Rosenzweig in Smithsonian Institution Archives. *Robert Tucker Abbott (1974). ''American Malacologists. A National Register of Professional and Amateur Malacologists and Private Shell Collectors and Biographies of Early American Mollusk Workers Born Between 1618 and 1900'', American Malacologists (Falls Church, Virginia) : iv + 494 p. ) American malacologists 1909 deaths 1827 births Scientists from Boston 19th-century American zoologists University of California, Berkeley people Smithsonian Institution people {{zoologist-stub