William Healey Dall (August 21, 1845 – March 27, 1927) was an American naturalist, a prominent malacologist, and one of the earliest scientific explorers of interior Alaska. He described many mollusks of the Pacific NorthwestofNorth America, and was for many years America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks.
Dall was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father Charles Henry Appleton Dall, (1816–86), a Unitarian minister, moved in 1855 to India as a missionary. His family however stayed in Massachusetts, where Dall's mother Caroline Wells Healey was a teacher, transcendentalist, reformer, and pioneer feminist.
In 1862, Dall's father, on one of his few brief visits home, brought his son in contact with some naturalists at Harvard University, where he had studied, and in 1863, when Dall graduated from high school, he took a keen interest in mollusks. In 1863 he became a pupil of Louis Agassiz of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, in natural science. He encouraged Dall's interest in malacology, a field still in its infancy. He also studied anatomy and medicine under Jeffries Wyman.[2]
Village on the lower Yukon during fishing season, June 1868, from an original sketch by DallDall's 1875 map showing the distribution of native tribes in AlaskaDall about 1888
In 1866, Dall continued this expedition to Siberia. On a stop at St. Michael, Alaska, he was informed that Kennicott had died of a heart attack on May 13, 1866, while prospecting a possible telegraph route along the Yukon River. Set on finishing Kennicott's Yukon River work, Dall stayed on the Yukon during the winter. Because of cancellation of his own expedition, he had to continue this work at his own expense until autumn 1868. Meanwhile, in 1867, the U.S. had acquired Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. This was uncharted country, with a fauna and flora still waiting to be explored and described, a task Dall took upon himself as a surveyor-scientist.
Back at the Smithsonian, he started cataloguing the thousands of specimens he had collected during this expedition. In 1870 he published his account of his pioneering travels in Alaska and Its Resources, describing the Yukon River, the geography and resources of Alaska, and its inhabitants. Also in 1870, Dall was appointed Acting Assistant to the United States Coast Survey (renamed the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878).
Dall went on several more reconnaissance and survey missions to Alaska between 1871 and 1874. His official mission was to survey the Alaska coast, but he took the opportunity to acquire specimens, which he collected in great numbers. In 1871–72, he surveyed the Aleutian Islands. In 1874 aboard the United States Coast Survey schooner Yukon, he anchored in Lituya Bay, which he compared to Yosemite Valley in California, had it retained its glaciers.
He sent his collection of mollusks, echinoderms, and fossils to Louis Agassiz at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology; plants went to Asa Gray at Harvard; archaeological and ethnological material went to the Smithsonian. In 1877–1878 he was associated with the Blake expeditions", along the east coast of the United States. The major publications on the Blake Expeditions were published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard.
Dall married Annette Whitney in 1880. They travelled to Alaska on their honeymoon. After arriving in Sitka, his wife went back home to Washington, D.C. He began his final survey season aboard the schooner Yukon. He was accompanied, among others, by the ichthyologistTarleton Hoffman Bean (1846–1916).
In 1884, Dall left the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (known until 1878 as the U.S. Coast Survey), having already written over 400 papers. In 1885 he transferred to the newly created United States Geological Survey, obtaining a position as paleontologist. He was assigned to the U.S. National Museum as honorary curator of invertebrate paleontology, studying recent and fossil mollusks. He would hold this position until his death.
As part of his work for the U.S. Geological Survey, Dall made trips to study geology and fossils: in the Pacific Northwest (1890, 1892, 1895, 1897, 1901, and 1910), in Florida (1891), and in Georgia (1893).
In 1899 he and an elite crew of scientists, such as the expert in glaciologyJohn Muir, were members of the Harriman Alaska Expeditionalong the glacial fjords of the Alaska coast and the Aleutian Islands and to the Bering Strait aboard the steamerSS George W. Elder. Many new genera and species were described. Dall was the undisputed expert on Alaska, and the scientists aboard were often surprised by his erudition, both in biology and in respect to the cultures of the native Alaskan peoples. His contributions to the reports of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, include a chapter Description and Exploration of Alaska, and Volume 13, Land and Fresh-water Mollusks.
Dall published over 1,600 papers, reviews, and commentaries. He described 5,427 species, many of them mollusks.[8] Many of his papers were short, but a number of his publications were comprehensive monographs.
Title page of "A Monograph of West American Pyramidellid Mollusks" (1909)
Report on the Mollusca, Part I Bivalvia Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard, Vol. XII (1885–1886)
Report on the Mollusca, Part II Gastropoda & Scaphopoda Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard, Vol. XVIII, XXIX – (June 1889)
Dall, William Healey.Report of geographic and hydrographical explorations on the coast of Alaska [1873.] (4° 1 map. (Coast Survey. Ann. Report, 1873. App. 11, pp. 111–2.))
Dall, William Healey. Report on coal and lignite of Alaska. (Geol. Survey. 17 Rpt., pt. 1. 1896. pp. 763–908, pls. 48–58.)
Dall, William Healey. Report on Mount Saint Elias, Mount Fairweather, and some of the adjacent mountains. (Coast Survey. Ann. Report, 1875. App. 10, pp. 157–88).
Dall, William Healey. Map: Showing the distribution of the tribes of Alaska and adjoining territory. 55° to 65° N latitude × 130° to 170° W longitude. Scale: 50 mi (80 km) = 7⁄8 in (22 mm). Size: 21+3⁄8 in × 30+1⁄4 in (540 mm × 770 mm).
^"William Healey Dall". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. February 9, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
^Florence A. Ruhoff (1973), Bibliography and Zoological Taxa of Paul Bartsch, Biographical Sketch by Harald A. Rehder, Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, Number 143
^"Reviews". The Canadian Journal of Science, Literature and History. 12 (6): 480. August 1870. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
Boss, Kenneth J., Joseph Rosewater [and] Florence A. Ruhoff. The zoological taxa of William Healey Dall Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1968.
Paul, Harald Alfred Rehder and Beulah E. Shields Bartsch. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF WILLIAM HEALEY DALL. Smithsonian Institution 1946.
Sterling, Keir B., ed. (1997). "Dall, William Healey". Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists. Greenwood Press.
