Berry was born in Unity, Maine,[2] but the family home was the Winnecook Ranch in Montana, which had been founded by his father Ralph in 1880.[1] In 1897, he moved with his mother to Redlands, California.[1]
Berry received a B.S. (1909) from Stanford and his M.S. (1910) from Harvard. He then returned to Stanford for his Ph.D. work on cephalopods and got his doctorate in 1913.[1]
From 1913 until 1915, he worked as a librarian and research assistant at the Scripps Institution for Biological ResearchinLa Jolla, California.[3] This was the last paid employment he ever held in academia—all his later studies and expeditions were financed by the profits from the family ranch in Montana.[1]
From November 1946 to December 1969, Berry published his own journal, Leaflets in Malacology, which primary contained articles which he had written himself.[4]
Despite his independent status, he became a renowned malacologist, publishing 209 articles and establishing 401 mollusctaxa. His scientific publications dealt with chitons, cephalopods, and land snails.[5] Forty-seven of his published papers were about cephalopods.[5]
Berry also had an interest in horticulture, where he concentrated on the hybridization of irises and daffodils.[3] For some time, from the 1920s until the late 1940s, he ran a horticultural business from Winnecook Ranch, which he had taken over after the death of his father in 1911.[1] In 1917 he became the president of the Winnecook Ranch Company, a post he occupied until his death in 1984.[1]
