Leo George Hertlein (1898 – 1972) was an American

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

and

malacologist Malacology, from Ancient Greek μαλακός (''malakós''), meaning "soft", and λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (molluscs or mollusks), the second-largest ...

who studied the Recent and

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

mollusks Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda. The num ...

of the eastern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

Biography

Hertlein was born on a farm in

Pratt County, Kansas Pratt County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat and largest city is Pratt. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 9,157. The county was named for Caleb Pratt, a U.S. soldier who died in the Battl ...

. After graduating high school in

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the List of cities in Kansas, most populous city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397, ...

, he moved to the West Coast and entered the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

as a

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

major. After graduating with a B.A., Hertlein enrolled as a graduate student at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He received his doctorate in 1929. His dissertation was on the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

area. In 1929, Hertlein was appointed assistant

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

of the Department of Paleontology at the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, that is among the largest List of natural history museums, museums of natural history in the world, housing over ...

. He rose to become the curator of Invertebrate Paleontology and was elected a Fellow. In the 1930s, he traveled to the Galapagos Islands and the nearshore areas of Central America and Mexico. He published over 150 papers on Recent and fossil mollusks, echinoderms, and

brachiopod Brachiopods (), phylum (biology), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear e ...

s from California, Oregon, Washington, and Mexico. On many occasions, Hertlein worked with

Ulysses S. Grant IV Ulysses Simpson Grant IV (May 23, 1893 – March 11, 1977) was an American geologist and paleontologist known for his work on the fossil mollusks of the California Pacific Coast. He was the youngest son of Ulysses S. Grant Jr., and a grandson of ...

, who was a classmate at Stanford and who also worked on the fossil mollusks of California. They collaborated on several papers.

Selected bibliography

*Grant, U. S., & Hertlein, L. G. (1938)
''The West American Cenozoic Echinoidea''
University of California Press. *Hertlein, L. G., & Grant, U. S., IV. (1944)
''The geology and paleontology of the marine Pliocene of San Diego, California''
San Diego: San Diego Society of Natural History. *Hertlein, L. G., & Grant, U. S. (1944). ''The Cenozoic Brachiopoda of western North America''. University of California Press. *Hertlein, L. G., & W. K. Emerson. (1953). ''Mollusks from Clipperton Island (Eastern Pacific) with the description of a new species of gastropod''. Transactions of the San Diego Society of Natural History vol. 11, no. 13, pp. 345–364.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hertlein, Leo George 1898 births 1972 deaths American malacologists American paleontologists 20th-century American zoologists