Joel Asaph Allen (July 19, 1838 – August 29, 1921) was an American

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

, mammalogist, and

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

. He became the first president of the

American Ornithologists' Union The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

, the first curator of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s and

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur ...

s at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 int ...

, and the first head of that museum's Department of Ornithology. He is remembered for Allen's rule, which states that the bodies of endotherms (warm-blooded animals) vary in shape with climate, having increased surface area in hot climates to lose heat, and minimized surface area in cold climates, to conserve heat.

Early life

Allen was born in

Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, th ...

, the son of Joel Allen and Harriet Trumbull. He studied and collected specimen of natural history early in life, but he was forced to sell his relatively large collection so that he could attend the

Wilbraham & Monson Academy Wilbraham & Monson Academy (WMA) is a college-preparatory school located in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1804, it is a four-year boarding and day high school for students in Grades 9-12 and postgraduate. A middle school, with Grades 6– ...

in 1861. The following year, he transferred to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

, where he studied under

Louis Agassiz Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history. Spending his early life in Switzerland, he rec ...

Career as a field collector of natural history

In 1865, he took part in his mentor's 1865 expedition to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

in search of evidence of an ice age there, which Agassiz later claimed to have found. After returning to Massachusetts, chronic ill health caused him to return to his family farm in Springfield. By 1867, Allen's health had improved enough that he went on a flurry of collecting trips, including at Sodus Bay, and in Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. Upon his return to Massachusetts, he took the position of curator of birds and mammals at Harvard's

Museum of Comparative Zoology A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

. In the winter of 1868–1869, he was one of two ornithologists, the other being Charles Johnson Maynard, to explore the relatively unknown state of Florida, which was still very much a wilderness in the late 1860s. When he returned, he wrote a celebrated analysis of his trip entitled ''On the Mammals and Winter Birds of Eastern Florida,'' which was published in 1871. That same year he was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

. For the next few years, Allen ventured to the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, a ...

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

, and

Dakota Territory The Territory of Dakota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1861, until November 2, 1889, when the final extent of the reduced territory was split and admitted to the Union as the states of N ...

on collecting trips for Harvard's museum. Except for an 1882 collecting trip in Colorado with fellow ornithologist William Brewster, Allen never went field collecting again, primarily because of his fragile health.

Career as a researcher and natural historian

Following the end of his field-collecting days, Allen dedicated his life to research and editorial publication. In the early summer of 1876, Allen was elected by the

Nuttall Ornithological Club The Nuttall Ornithological Club is the oldest ornithology organization in the United States. History The club initially was a small informal group of William Brewster's childhood friends, all of whom shared his interest in ornithology. These fr ...

to replace Charles Johnson Maynard and Henry Augustus Purdie as editor of their ''Bulletin''. In 1883, Allen, along with William Brewster and Elliott Coues, created the

. Allen, who was suffering ill health, was unable to attend their inaugural meeting, but was elected their first president, nonetheless. He also became the chief editor of their journal, ''The Auk''. In 1885, he was appointed as the first curator of

s and

s at the

in New York, later becoming the first head of the museum's Department of Ornithology. In 1886, he was one of the incorporators of the first Audubon Society,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He was a member of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, and of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

. The hundreds of letters which Elliott Coues sent to him over many decades form one of the cornerstones of the history of American ornithology. Allen famously memorialized Coues in the pages of '' The Auk'', the union's journal, after the latter's death in 1899. He formulated what is now known as Allen's rule, stating a correlation between body shape and climate, in 1877.

Bibliography

''On the Mammals and Winter Birds of Eastern Florida''
(1871)
''The American Bisons''
(1876)
''History of the American Bison, Bison americanus''
(1877) * ''Monographs of North American Rodentia'' (with Elliott Coues 1877)
''History of North American Pinnipedia''
(1880)
''The Right Whale of the North Atlantic''
(1883)
''Mammals of Southern Patagonia''
(1905) * ''The Influence of Physical Conditions in the Genesis of Species'' (1905) * ''Ontogenetic and Other Variations in Musk-Oxen'' (1913)

References

External links

* *
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Joel Asaph American science writers 1838 births 1921 deaths Harvard University alumni American zoologists American ornithologists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Springfield, Massachusetts Members of the American Philosophical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences