William Healey Dall

William Healy Dall (August 21, 1845 - March 27, 1927) was an American naturalist, an outstanding malacologist, and one of the first scientific researchers in the interior of Alaska. He described many mollusks in the Pacific Northwest of America and for many years was America's outstanding authority on living and fossil mollusks. Doll also made a significant contribution to ornithology, zoology of vertebrates and invertebrates, physical and cultural anthropology, oceanography and paleontology. In addition, he made meteorological observations in Alaska for the Smithsonian Institution. Dall was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816-1886), the Unitarian Minister, moved to India in 1855 as a missionary. However, his family remained in Massachusetts, where Dall's mother, Caroline Wells Healy, was a teacher, transcendentalist, reformer, and pioneer of the feminist. In 1862, during one of his short home visits, Dalla's father introduced his son to some natural scientists at Harvard University, where he studied, and in 1863, when Dall graduated from high school, he became interested in mollusks. In 1863, he became a student of the Louis Agassis Museum of Natural History from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. He encouraged Dall's interest in malacology, an area still in its infancy. He also studied anatomy and medicine under the direction of Jeffries Wyman and Dr. Daniel Brainerd.