Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Harper, Francis (United States 1886-1972)
vertebrate zoology

Harper spent his professional career as something of a "hired gun." Under the employ of a number of different institutions, he explored the natural history (especially vertebrates) of a variety of locations and environments ranging northward to Keewatin and the Ungava Peninsula in Canada and southward to the Okefenokee Swamp. The places from which he received grant support included the American Philosophical Society, the Arctic Institute of North America, the National Science Foundation, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Canadian Department of Northern Affairs, the Canadian Social Sciences Research Council, the Longwood Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is probably best known for his landmark survey Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Old World (one of the earliest studies drawing attention to the plight of disappearing species), and for his efforts to protect Okefenokee Swamp.

--born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, on 17 November 1886.
--1914: A.B., Cornell University; joins field expedition to the Great Slave Lake region
--1916: fisheries investigator, New York Conservation Commission
--1916-1917, 1919-1921: assistant biologist, U. S. Biological Survey
--1920: field expedition to the Lake Athabasca region
--1922-1925: instructor in zoology, Cornell University
--1925: Ph.D. in vertebrate zoology, Cornell University
--1925-1929: secretary, editor and curator of mammals and fishes, Boston Society of Natural History
--1927: publishes "The Mammals of the Okefinokee Swamp Region of Georgia" in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History
--1929-1935: member of the scientific staff at Biological Abstracts
--1936-1939: research associate, American Committee for International Wild Life Protection
--1939-1944: works for the John Bartram Association
--1944-: independent researcher
--1945: publishes his Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Old World
--1947: field expedition to Keewatin
--1950-1952: Guggenheim fellow
--1953: field expedition to the Ungava Peninsula
--dies at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 17 November 1972.

--Arctic, Vol. 53(1) (2000): 72-75.
--Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 54(3) (1973): 800-801.