William Stimpson (February 14, 1832 – May 26, 1872) was an American scientist. It was he who invented the "Stimpson range", the first sheet-iron cooking stove, famous in its day throughout New England. When fellow club member Robert Kennicott left his post as director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences in Chicago, Stimpson went to that city to take his place. When Kennicott died in Russian America (present day Alaska) in 1866, Stimpson chose to stay in Chicago out of loyalty to his friend and the academy. In 1869 the Smithsonian sent its entire collection of marine invertebrates to the academy, as Stimpson was working on a monographs of the marine invertebrates of America's East Coast. By 1871 the academy possessed one of the most extensive natural history collections in the United States. The academy's "fireproof" building was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (later rebuilt), along with all of Stimpson's unpublished manuscripts and the specimens they were based upon. He traveled to Florida in the winter of 1871–1872 in an attempt to replace some of what had been lost. After minimal success he died of tuberculosis seven months after the fire in Ilchester, Maryland). He is buried in an unmarked grave in Ellicott City, Maryland.

Stimpson is credited with naming 827 valid taxa of marine invertebrates from eleven different phyla. He is primarily known for his descriptions of crustaceans and mollusks. Ronald Scott Vasile, William Stimpson and the Golden Age of American Natural History, Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.

Species named for him

thumb|upright=0.6|Acanthotelson stimpsoni Meek & Worthen, 1865. [[Field Museum.]]

  • Rare Hawaiian Goby Fish Sicydium stimpsoni Gill, 1860
  • Eel Bathycongrus stimpsoni Fowler, 1934
  • Sun Starfish Solaster stimpsoni
  • Stimpson coastal shrimp Heptacarpus stimpsoni
  • Fossil - small aquatic arthropod Acanthotelson stimpsoni Meek & Worthen
  • Striped sunstar Solaster stimpsoni
  • Clam Mercenaria stimpsoni
  • Yellow Cone Conus stimpsoni Dall, 1902
  • Eyespot Rock Shrimp Sicyonia stimpsoni Bouvier, 1905
  • Nudibranch mollusc Coryphella stimpsoni (Verrill 1879)
  • Gastropod Pteropurpura stimpsoni (A. Adams, 1863)
  • Gastropod Turritellopsis stimpsoni (Dall, 1919)
  • genus of flowering plants (family Primulaceae), Stimpsonia (C.Wright ex A.Gray, 1859 )

Bibliography

  • Stimpson W. (1851). Shells of New England. A revision of the synonymy of the testaceous mollusks of New England. Phillips, Samson & Co., Boston. vi + 58 pp., 2 plates.
  • Stimpson W. (1864). "On the structural characters of so-called melanians of North America". The American Journal of Science and Arts (2)38: 41-53.
  • Stimpson W. (1865). "On certain genera and families of zoophagous gastropods". American Journal of Conchology 1(1): 55-64, plates 8-9.
  • Stimpson W. (1865). "Diagnoses of newly discovered genera of gasteropods, belonging to the sub-fam. Hydrobiinae, of the family Rissoidae". American Journal of Conchology 1: 52-54.
  • Stimpson W. (1865). "Researches upon the Hydrobiinae and allied forms chiefly made upon materials in the museum of the Smithsonian Institution". Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 7(201): 1-59.
  • Vasile, R. S. (2018). William Stimpson and the Golden Age of American Natural History (1st ed., p. 308). Northern Illinois University Press.

See also

  • European and American voyages of scientific exploration
  • :Category:Taxa named by William Stimpson

References

This article incorporates public domain text from the reference

  • Stimpson biography from the Smithsonian Institution
  • Biography and reproductions of some of Stimpson's illustrations
  • William Stimpson Papers, 1852-1861 from the Smithsonian Institution Archives
  • https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780875807843/william-stimpson-and-the-golden-age-of-american-natural-history/#bookTabs=1