Arthur Mangun Banta

Background

Banta was born in Greenwood, Indiana, on December 31, 1877, to parents James Henry and Mary (Magnun) Banta, a family of Dutch descent.

Education

He received his A. B. and A. M. degrees from Indiana University in 1903 and 1904, respectively, and his Ph. D. from Harvard University in 1907.

Career

In 1906 he became a teaching fellow at Harvard and from 1907 to 1909 was professor of biology at Marietta College in Ohio. In 1909 Banta was appointed resident investigator at the Station for Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institution in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, where he remained until 1930, when he became research professor of biology at Brown University. He was also a research associate with the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D. C. , and from 1933 to 1937 was a member of the National Research Council Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences. He retired in 1945, and died in Providence, Rhode Island, on January 2, 1946. Banta was a student of environmental effects on cave animals and of the physiological, genetical, and evolutionary characteristics of the Cladocera, or water flea.

Achievements

• His 1907 publication The Fauna of Mayfield's Cave, a survey of the fauna of an Indiana cave, has become a "classic account in the annals of cave biology in the United States. "

Works

More photos

• book

  • Selection in Cladocera on the Basis of a Physiological Character: -1921

    (Originally published in 1921. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • The fauna of Mayfield's Cave.

Membership

He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Society of Zoologists, American Society of Naturalists, Ecological Society of America, American Genetic Association, Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, and the Limnological Society of America.

Connections

Father:

James Henry Banta

Mother:

Mary (Magnun) Banta