Francis Harper

Author

1886 – 1972

71

Who was Francis Harper?

Francis Harper was an American naturalist. His research included studies of the Okefenokee Swamp and fieldwork in the north eastern United States and in northern Canada, and he also studied the 18th-century American naturalists John and William Bartram. Harper authored new combinations for two species originally described by William Bartram, Garberia heterophylla and Roystonea elata.

Harper received an A.B. in 1914 and a Ph.D. in 1925 from Cornell University. He taught briefly at Swarthmore College, but beyond that he worked for museums, government agencies and research agencies. In 1914 Harper made his first trip to northern Canada on an expedition to Lake Athabasca working as a zoologist for the Geological Survey of Canada.

Between 1917 and 1919 Harper served as a rodent control officer in France with the United States Army's 79th Division. He returned to Athabasca in 1920, Nueltin Lake in southern Keewatin in 1947 and the Ungava Peninsula in 1953, his last trip north. Harper published notable works on the caribou of Keewatin, the birds of the Ungava Peninsula, and the Montagnais of the Ungava.

From 1917 through the 1950s Harper spent significant time researching the work of the early North American naturalists John Bartram and his son William Bartram. Harper traced the Bartrams' travels in the American South and helped revive both scientific and popular interest in the Bartrams' work. Harper's research into the Bartrams was funded by grants from the John Bartram Association in Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the Guggenheim Foundation among others. Harper published extensively on both of the Bartrams including annotated editions of John Bartram's "Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida 1765-1766; William Bartram's "Report to Dr. John Fothergill 1773-1774" and an annotated naturalist's edition of William Bartram Travels... first published in Philadelphia in 1791.

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Born
Nov 17, 1886
Southbridge
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • Doctorate, Cornell University
    ( - 1925)
  • Bachelor of Arts, Cornell University
    ( - 1914)
Died
Nov 17, 1972
Chapel Hill

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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