Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Jr.

Who was Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Jr.?

Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Jr. was an American zoologist and a founding director of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as well as of the World Wildlife Fund.

Coolidge was born in Boston, Massachusetts; his father Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Sr. was the brother of Archibald Cary Coolidge. Coolidge studied at Milton Academy and at the University of Arizona before entering Harvard. Originally, he had wanted to become a diplomat, like his uncle Archibald Cary Coolidge, but he soon turned to biology, specializing in primatology. After getting a B.S. from Harvard in 1927, he worked as curator at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Coolidge participated in the Harvard Medical Expedition to Africa in 1926/27 to Liberia, from where he brought back a large gorilla that is still on display at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1929 he published "A revision of the genus Gorilla", which forms the basis of the modern taxonomy of the genus Gorilla.

Coolidge participated in the Kelly-Roosevelt Expedition to Asia in 1928/29, and in 1937, he organized and led the Asiatic Primate Expedition through northwest Tonkin and northern Laos to study gibbons.