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Cycle In The Life Of The Individual, Ontogeny And In The Evolution Of Its Own Group, Phylogeny (1897)
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Alpheus Hyatt was an American zoologist and palaeontologist.
Background
Alpheus Hyatt II was born in Washington, D. C. in 1838. He was a descendant of Charles Hyatt who was a resident of Maryland in 1694, was the son of Alpheus and Harriet R. (King) Hyatt. He was brought up at the family homestead "Wansbeck" near Baltimore, where his father was a leading merchant.
Education
As a boy he was interested in natural history and under the influence of an early teacher he was attracted to the study of fossils. His father's abundant means made it possible for him to receive every educational advantage. Studying at first under tutors and then at the Maryland Military Academy at Oxford, Md. , he prepared for Yale College and entered in 1856, but after a year his mother, who desired him to become a Roman Catholic priest, sent him to Rome, hoping that the influence of friends there and proximity to the Papal Court would serve her purpose. During this year, however, he determined to devote his life to science, and returning to America in 1858, he entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University to study engineering.
Coming under the influence of Louis Agassiz, he was soon drawn into the study of natural history and began lifelong friendships with S. H. Scudder, A. S. Packard, Jr. , A. E. Verrill and others who subsequently became leaders in zo"logical work in America. This congenial group were enthusiastic devotees of Agassiz, and Hyatt's admiration went so far that he is said to have learned his master's famous "Essay on Classification" by heart. In 1861, with two companions, he made a trip to the island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to collect fossils and marine animals. The following year he graduated from Harvard with the degree of B. S.
Career
Feeling it his duty to serve the cause of the Union in the Civil War, he raised a militia company in Cambridge, enlisting as a private himself, but he was soon made a lieutenant and later a captain in the 47th Massachusetts. Receiving an honorable discharge at the close of the war, he returned to Cambridge and again took up scientific work, being placed in charge of the fossil cephalopods in the Museum of Comparative Zo"logy, a responsibility which he continued to carry as long as he lived.
In 1867, Hyatt, in company with several others of Agassiz's students, left Cambridge and took up work with the Essex Institute at Salem, Massachussets, where, among other activities, he assisted in establishing the Peabody Academy of Sciences and in founding the American Naturalist, the first American journal devoted to biological sciences. He was one of its editors, 1867-71. In this journal (April-June 1867) and in the Proceedings of the Essex Institute (vols. IV-V, 1866 - 68), he published his first important contribution to zo"logy, a series of papers dealing with "the moss-animals or fresh-water Polyzoa. " He also began his study on sponges, which culminated years later in a monograph, "Revision of the North American Poriferae".
After 1873 he lived in Cambridge, in order to be near the great collection of cephalopods at the Museum of Comparative Zo"logy; a large proportion of the research work of the last twenty-five years of his career was devoted to this collection. In 1880, however, he published a very important monograph, "The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim". In 1889 appeared his great memoir dealing with cephalopods, entitled "Genesis of the Arietidae"; his last contribution to the study of the same group appeared after his death, as a joint monograph with J. P. Smith, Triassic Cephalopod Genera of America (1905), being Professional Paper No. 40 of the United States Geological Survey.
Hyatt's main interest in all his work was based on his desire to discover the laws which governed the development of the individual and the evolution of groups. He elaborated the idea of stages in development, and of the laws associated with such stages. While his terminology was technical and sometimes made his writings hard for a beginner to read, his ideas were stimulating to a notable degree. The importance and value of the principles which he elaborated have been demonstrated by his leading students in their investigations on various groups of animals other than those with which Hyatt worked. In 1893, Hyatt made his chief contribution to the discussion of stages and their controlling laws in a paper called "Phylogeny of an Acquired Characteristic".
He loved to teach and accepted every opportunity to do so. He was professor of zo"logy and pal'ontology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for eighteen years (1870 - 88) and he taught the same subjects at Boston University for twenty-five years (1877 - 1902). In addition he carried on at the Boston Society of Natural History for over thirty years (1870 - 1902) the Teachers School of Science, where he gave courses of lectures on biology to the public-school teachers of Boston. Recognizing the great value of first-hand contact in the laboratory with animal forms, he established a marine laboratory in 1879 at Annisquam, Massachussets, but as the location proved to be unsuitable, this laboratory was abandoned and Hyatt joined with others in the foundation at Woods Hole, Massachussets, of what is now the chief marine biological laboratory in America. He was first president of the board of trustees of this now famous institution.
Death came to him suddenly from heart failure as he was on his way to attend a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History.
In 1870 Hyatt left Salem to become custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History. In 1881, he was made curator, and he remained the scientific head of the Society until his death.
He was keenly interested in the natural beauty of New England and was one of the original members of the Appalachian Mountain Club, of which he later served as president (1887).
Personality
As a man Hyatt inspired the love and devotion of his students to a marked degree. The fertility of his imagination was controlled by his high-minded scientific integrity, while his enthusiasm was notably contagious. He was always approachable and kindly, unpretentious and open-minded. He was constantly busy with either his researches or his curatorial duties but always found time to help teachers or students who needed aid.
Connections
On January 7, 1867, Hyatt married Ardella Beebe of Kinderhook, N. Y. , and the hospitality of their home in Cambridge was notable. There were three children, one son and two daughters. Both of the daughters became sculptors – one, Anna Hyatt Huntington, achieving a national reputation for work characterized by scientific accuracy as well as artistic merit.