Charles Atwood Kofoid was an American zoologist. His collection and classification of many new species of marine protozoans helped establish marine biology on a systematic basis.
Background
Ethnicity:
Kofoid's father emigrated to the United States from Bornholm, Denmark, in 1860; his mother was a native of Indiana.
Charles Atwood Kofoid was born on October 11, 1865, in Granville, Illinois, United States. He was the oldest of at least four children of Nelson Kofoid and Janette Blake.
Education
Nothing is known of Kofoid's childhood and youth until 1883, when he entered the preparatory department of Oberlin College in Ohio; he began the college course two years later, earning his expenses by working as a waiter. Inspired by one of his teachers, Albert Wright, Kofoid became interested in natural history and began making field trips and collecting plants. He completed his baccalaureate at Oberlin in 1890, and immediately took up graduate work at Harvard, completing his doctorate in 1894.
In the fall of 1894 Kofoid became an instructor in vertebrate morphology at the University of Michigan, and the following year he moved to Havana, Illinois, as superintendent of the biological station of the University of Illinois. He became superintendent of the Illinois State Natural History Survey in 1898 and also taught zoology at the University of Illinois at Urbana (1897-1900). In the rivers and lakes of his native state Kofoid began his professional studies on the microorganisms of fresh water, especially the phytoplankton.
During his stay at Harvard, Kofoid met William Emerson Ritter, who became chairman of the newly established zoology department at the University of California at Berkeley. At Ritter's invitation, Kofoid moved to Berkeley in 1900 as assistant professor of histology and embryology; he was made associate professor in 1904 and, in 1910, professor of zoology and chairman of the department. The two men formed a close personal and professional association that lasted until Ritter's death.
Because of his involvement in the work of the marine station, he spent his sabbatical leave (1908-1909) visiting similar laboratories in Europe, particularly the Naples Zoological Station, and bought and shipped home new equipment for the La Jolla laboratories. After his return, he prepared a detailed report, The Biological Stations of Europe (1910), for the United States Bureau of Education. Much of Kofoid's work in Illinois had been quantitative and statistical studies of the distribution and movement of freshwater plankton. In California, he shifted to the study of marine plankton, and in 1904-1905 made a six months' collecting trip to the South Seas with Alexander Agassiz. To facilitate the work of collecting, Kofoid also devised two useful pieces of apparatus, a self-closing bucket, and a horizontal net that could be opened or closed at a chosen depth.
During World War I he was commissioned as a major in the Army Sanitary Corps; there his interest expanded to include human parasitic protozoans, tapeworms, hookworms, and other intestinal parasites. After the war, he directed a laboratory of parasitology for the California State Board of Health which provided careful training for medical technicians. Other researches in the interest of public service were a study of the marine boring organisms that were damaging waterfront installations in California harbors, another on the life history of termites, and a project to detect and control plankton organisms that could contaminate the water in the San Francisco reservoirs. An indefatigable organizer, Kofoid had a passion for detail that may have deterred him from truly great research. His work was the accumulation and cataloguing of facts and the collection of extensive material, not synthesis. His fields of interest were broad so that he left a large body of data to be classified later, by other workers.
He took a strong interest in the researches of his many graduate students, with whom he frequently collaborated in publications, and whom he conscientiously helped to find employment. Kofoid also spent much time in editing various scientific periodicals and in writing abstracts and reviews. For many years he served as an editor for Biological Abstracts and for the University of California Publications in Zoology.
Kofoid was a member of the Congregational church, and took a strong interest in its missionary and other projects.
Views
Kofoid’s research centered on the plankton and pelagic life of the Pacific ocean. He published many articles and monographs on dinoflagellates and tintinnids. New collection techniques and a more systematic attack upon the problems of marine biology resulted from his work. He accompanied Alexander Agassiz on one voyage and retained a lifelong interest in the implications of a Darwinian approach to biology. After a visit to the Far East, he became interested in rumen ciliates and general parasitology. Although his system of classifying ciliates is not universally accepted, distinguished workers in the field still follow it.
Applied biology interested Kofoid, and he studied shipworms and termites in the San Francisco Bay area. In the interests of a more systematic approach to biological research, he played an instrumental role in founding what is now called the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California. He is credited with the development of the plankton net, a deep seawater sampler and a self-closing plankton net for horizontal towing.
Although he contributed much to the taxonomy of protozoans and produced excellent descriptions of individual forms, Kofoid was widely criticized for his tendency to break groups down into too fine classes and hence to name too many new species. Because of his inexperience in parasitology, he often described as new species what others regarded as accepted variations.
Membership
Kofoid was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1922.
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
1922
Personality
Kofoid was a vigorous and dedicated scientist. The very range of his research interests may have blunted his ability to achieve outstanding prominence in any one field. He exemplifies the inherent difficulties of American biology at a time when it was maturing; and he gave it dignity and helped shape its direction.
Kofoid's predominant traits, according to Goldschmidt, were "abundance of energy, the hunger for facts, the need of putting things in order, a great sense of civic responsibility and a general Puritanic outlook on life."
His chief recreations were traveling and collecting books, particularly books relating to the history of biology.
Interests
traveling, collecting books
Connections
On June 30, 1894, Kofoid married an Oberlin classmate, Carrie Prudence Winter. They had no children. His wife was active in charitable work and community affairs.