Career
He is currently a Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where he has been a curator since 1955. He was also Chairman of the Department of Living Invertebrates and head of the Malacology section for several decades. Emerson has named and described numerous taxa of mollusks, including:
Cymatium perryi Emerson & Old, 1963, a sea snail or marine gastropod.