Background

Samuel Ottmar Mast was born on October 3, 1871, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States to Friedrich Ferdinand Gottlob Mast and Agnes Beata Staebler.

Education

Mast attended elementary school in his home state and received a teaching certificate from the State Normal College in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1897. He received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan in 1899, and in 1906 he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in zoology from Harvard.

Career

After graduation from Michigan Mast started an uninterrupted teaching career, which lasted forty-three years. From 1899 to 1908 he was a professor of biology and botany at Hope College, Holland, Michigan, and then associate professor of biology and professor of botany at Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained until 1911. He then joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and became the director of the zoological laboratory in 1938, when Jennings retired. Mast published his book Light and the Behavior of Organisms in 1911, and most of his later research was on the reactions of lower organism to stimuli, especially light. His contractile-hydraulic theory of amoeboid movement, proposed in 1926, continues to be basic in the explanation of this phenomenon. His careful study of the metabolism of the colorless in the flagellate Chilomonas paramecium (1933), showing its ability to synthesize organic compounds in the dark, is also a classic in the field.

Achievements

• During his long working life, Mast published almost 200 papers and books that became an important contribution to biological science. Besides being a member of many scientific societies, he was awarded the Cartwright Prize by Columbia University in 1909. The State Normal College at Ypsilanti awarded him an honorary Master of Pedagogy in 1912, and the University of Michigan the Doctor of Science in 1941, a year before he retired.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Reactions To Temperature Changes In Spirillum, Hydra, And Fresh-water Planarians 1903
  • Light and the Behavior of Organisms 1911
  • Reactions To Temperature Changes In Spirillum, Hydra, And Freshwater Planarians 1903
  • Structure, movement, locomotion, and stimulation in Amoeba 1926
  • Collected Reprints 2015

Connections

Samuel Ottmar Mast married Grace Rebecca Tennent in 1908. They had three daughters: Louise Rebecca Mast, Elisabeth Tennent Mast, and Margaret Tennent Mast.

Father:

Friedrich Ferdinand Gottlob Mast

Mother:

Agnes Beata Staebler

Wife:

Grace Rebecca Tennent

Daughter:

Louise Rebecca Mast

Daughter:

Elisabeth Tennent Mast

Daughter:

Margaret Tennent Mast

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography: Volumes 9 & 10
  1980