Barbara Lawrence (zoologist)

Barbara Lawrence
Born(1909-07-30)July 30, 1909
Boston, Massachusetts
Died1997 (aged 87–88)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materVassar College
SpouseWilliam E. Schevill
Scientific career
FieldsPaleozoology
Mammalogy
InstitutionsHarvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology

Barbara Lawrence (July 30, 1909 – 1997), sometimes known as Barbara Lawrence Schevill, was an American paleozoologist and mammalogist known for her studies of canids, porpoises and howler monkeys and her work as the mammal curator at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ).[1][2]

Early life and education[edit]

Lawrence was born on July 30, 1909, in Boston to Theodora (née Eldredge) and Harris Hooper Lawrence, their third child. She married William E. Schevill on December 23, 1938, while still attending Vassar College, where she was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1931.[1][2]

Career and research[edit]

After taking a position as the Curator of Mammals at the MCZ, she took her first trip to do field research on the howler monkeys of East Africa, where she returned on other trips. In 1936 and 1937, she traveled to the Philippines and Sumatra to study bats. She collaborated with her husband, William Schevill, on studies of cetacean communication and echolocation, where they made the first recordings of porpoise and whale calls, forming in many ways the founding framework for “literally hundreds of scientific studies produced by other workers from the 1960s until the present day."[3][4] While working at Harvard, she pioneered the practice of collecting full skeletons of mammals. She also traveled to Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi) in her field studies of mammals. Lawrence did field work in New Mexico and Iraq on the evolution of domesticated animals, and later went to Turkey to study fossil dogs there.[1][2] She was especially known for her work in canids:[5] her 1967 collaboration with William Bossert on the genus Canis was noted for its innovative application of statistics to evolutionary and ecological questions.[6]

Legacy[edit]

Barbara Lawrence died in 1997, three years after her husband's death and survived by her daughter, Lee, and son, Edward.[7] The Society of Ethnobiology awards the Lawrence Award each year to a promising graduate student in ethnobiology.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Harvey, Joyce; Ogilvie, Marilyn (July 27, 2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780203801451.
  2. ^ a b c d "BARBARA LAWRENCE (1909–1997) | Society of Ethnobiology". ethnobiology.org. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
  3. ^ BACKUS, R. H., BUMPUS, D., LAWRENCE, B., NORRIS, K. S., RAY, C. E., RAY, G. C., TWISS, J. R. and WATKINS, W. A., 1995 William Edward Schevill 1906–1994. Marine mammal science 11 : 416–419
  4. ^ Rolfe, WD Ian. "William Edward Schevill: palaeontologist, librarian, cetacean biologist." Archives of Natural History 39.1 (2012): 162-164. - https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/anh.2012.0069
  5. ^ Kaufman, Dawn M.; Kaufman, Donald W.; Kaufman, Glennis A. (1996). "Women in the Early Years of the American Society of Mammalogists (1919-1949)". Journal of Mammalogy. 77 (3): 642. doi:10.2307/1382670. JSTOR 1382670.
  6. ^ Armstrong, David M.; Johnson, Murray L.; Peterson, Randolph L. (1994). "Other Prominent Members". In Birney, Elmer C.; Choate, Jerry R. (eds.). Seventy-five Years of Mammalogy, 1919-1994. American Society of Mammalogists. pp. 110–120. ISBN 0935868739.
  7. ^ Pace, Eric (July 27, 1994). "W. E. Schevill Dies; Authority on Sounds Of Whales Was 88". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
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