Herndon Dowling Herpetological Collection

Herndon Dowling (1921 – 2015) was born in Cullman, Alabama, to Herndon and Ada Dowling. His father was the superintendent of public schools in Tuscaloosa, and his mother worked for the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. Dowling grew up in Tuscaloosa, the oldest of the 3 Dowling children, and attended public school there until graduating from High School in 1938.

After high school Dowling attended the University of Alabama and graduated with a degree in biology in 1942. The same year he joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a commissioned officer and graduated officer training school in 1943.

In 1945 Dowling was stationed at Guadalcanal where his duties included interpreting aerial photographs of Okinawa Island, evaluating bomb sites, and eventually the collection of snake venom for the Navy. Dowling received a citation for excellent service for his work interpreting aerial photographs and was sent to Tianjin to assist with the Japanese surrender in that region in 1945. Dowling requested an honorable discharge in 1946, to continue his education, though he remained in the Marine Corps Reserves until 1959.

Upon being discharged from the active duty Dowling pursued his M.S. degree in Zoology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. His work there focused on the systematics of the Black Swamp Snake (Seminatrix pygea).

Dowling continued his studies at a Ph. D. program at the University of Michigan in the discipline of zoo-geography, with a focus on the systematics of the snake genus Elaphe in North America. Dowling completed his doctorate in 1951. He then went to teach at Haverford College, in Pennsylvania, for a year, followed by the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station, and eventually the University of Arkansas. Dowling taught general biology, general zoology, as well as other related courses, and he introduced vertebrate natural history as a field course into the curriculum. Dowling left the University of Arkansas in 1959 because his contract was not renewed due to his refusal to comply with a newly enacted segregation policy at the university.

Dowling’s next position was as Reptile Curator at the Bronx Zoo, a position he held from 1960-1967. During his time with the Bronx Zoo, Dowling traveled and researched extensively, conducting field work in such places as the Galapagos, Trinidad, and Martinique.

Concurrently, Dowling also held positions at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in a grant funded capacity related to the generation of peer reviewed herpetological publications (1965-1973), as an adjunct professor at New York University (NYU) (1965-1973), and the University of Rhode Island (1964-1976). NYU eventually hired Dowling as an associate professor in 1973, and as a full professor in 1975. Dowling taught at NYU until his retirement in 1991. Dowling also eventually started his own journal, in 1973, called “Herpetological Information Search Systems” (HISS). During his career Dowling worked in many additional projects and positions in the field of herpetology, won over half a dozen awards for his work, and authored over 200 publications.

Citation: Stewart, Margaret M. , and Joseph C. Micthell. "Historical Perspectives." Copeia 2013, no. 1 (March 2013): 166-72. Accessed March 23, 2017. http://www.asihcopeiaonline.org/doi/abs/10.1643/OT-12-142.