Carl H. Eigenmann

Who was Carl H. Eigenmann?

Carl H. Eigenmann was an ichthyologist who, along with his wife Rosa Smith Eigenmann, described many of the fishes of North America and South America for the first time.

Born in Flehingen, Germany, at age 14 he moved to Rockport, Indiana. Within a few years, he had enrolled at the Indiana University, where he studied under David Starr Jordan. Eigenmann received a bachelor's degree in 1886, and soon after went to California, where he met Rosa Smith, herself already becoming known for her work on West Coast fisheries. They married on August 20, 1887, and then went to Harvard University, where they studied the collections made by Louis Agassiz and Franz Steindachner, and produced the first of a series of joint publications.

They moved to San Diego, California, in 1888, where he worked as curator of a natural history society, and helped found the San Diego Biological Laboratory. He received his PhD from Indiana in 1889, and took up a professorship of zoology there in 1891. In 1892, famed scientist Albert C. L. G. Günther financed Eigenmann's first expedition, a trip throughout western North America, where many new species were collected.