John Gould Anthony was a United States naturalist who became an expert on malacology, the study of mollusks.
Background
John Gould Anthony was born on May 17, 1804 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. is parents, Joseph and Mary (Gould) Anthony, were of old New England stock, the Anthonys going back to John Anthony (or Anthonie) of London, who settled in Rhode Island in 1634.
Several members of this American branch of the family became widely known for public services, military, politico-social, or scientific. When John was twelve years of age, his parents moved to Cincinnati.
Education
The boy's schooling seems to have been of the briefest and he went into business.
Career
In those days a group of enthusiastic naturalists had arisen in Ohio. Anthony made the acquaintance of Jared Kirtland and others of this circle, and became deeply interested in natural history. He was apparently able to devote considerable time to the collection and study of fresh-water mollusks, for which the Ohio River is famous.
From 1835 on, he corresponded extensively with mollusk students in the East and in Europe. In his delightfully frank letters to Louis Agassiz, S. S. Haldeman, and others, we have glimpses of the human and personal side of the scientific workers of the time.
Serious eye trouble in 1849 interrupted Anthony's activities for a year, and in 1851 he retired from business.
In 1853 he made a pedestrian tour of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. His aims, the restoration of health and the collecting of mollusks, were successfully achieved. The materials gathered were worked up and published in his papers from 1854 to 1860, and in L. Reeve's great British work Conchologia Iconica (1843-1868).
In 1863 Agassiz placed Anthony in charge of the mollusk collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, and in 1865 he was included in the scientific staff of the expedition to Brazil.
His later years were devoted to the classification and arrangement of the great collections at Cambridge, and, as a side issue, gathering data for a history of the Anthony family.
His letters were written in a small, regular, copperplate hand, beautiful if somewhat ornate. His labels, to be found in all the older museums, are unmistakable.
Achievements
As an author he was not prolific. His papers were mainly descriptive and had no great scientific influence; still, Anthony was recognized as an authority on the American land and freshwater mollusca. He spent most of his time at Harvard sorting and mounting specimens.
In his letters a wider horizon is often seen, and he supplied material for important monographs by others.
Personality
Personally he was a rather short and slender man, with well-shaped head, full beard, and brilliant, dark eyes.
