Jacob Boll

Who was Jacob Boll?

Jacob Boll was a Swiss naturalist and entomologist especially noted for his exploration of Texas.

Boll was born 1828 in Würenlos, Switzerland, and educated in Switzerland and Germany. Established as a naturalist, he turned his attention to microlepidoptera and established contact with Philipp Christoph Zeller. Around 1860 the Boll family travelled to Texas and joined the La Réunion socialist utopian community. They returned to Switzerland after a few years.

In 1869 he met with Louis Agassiz at Harvard, proceeding to Texas to collect animals for the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Returning to Switzerland he became a professional collector, working for Eduard Dämle and the Swiss government. Similar arrangements were made with Agassiz and in 1870 he collected insects in New England.

Boll settled permanently in the U.S.A. after his wife Henriette s' death in 1873. He lived in Dallas. In 1878 he collected Permian vertebrate fossils in northwest Texas for Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia. These collections are now in the American Museum of Natural History.

Boll published a number of papers in botany, entomology, and geology.