- Samuel Stillman Berry
Samuel Stillman Berry (
March 16 ,1887 - 1984) was a U.S. marinezoologist specialized oncephalopod s.He was born in
Unity, Maine (between Waterville and Bangor), but the family home was the Winnecook Ranch inMontana , which had been founded by his father Ralph in 1880. In 1897, he moved with his mother and two cousins toRedlands, California .Berry received a B.S. (1909) from Stanford and his M.S. (1910) from Harvard. He then returned to Stanford for his Ph.D. work on
cephalopod s and got his doctorate in 1913.From 1913 until 1918, he worked as a librarian and research assistant at the Scripps Institution for Biological Research in
La Jolla, California . This was the last paid employment he ever held in academia—all his later studies and expeditions were financed by the profits from the family ranch in Montana.Despite his independent status, he became a renowned malacologist, publishing 209 articles and establishing 401
mollusc taxa. Most of his work dealt withchiton s, cephalopods, and also landsnail s.Berry also had an interest in
horticulture , where he concentrated on the hybridization of irises anddaffodil s. For some time, from the 1920s until the late 1940s, he even ran a horticultural business from Winnecook Ranch, which he had taken over after the death of his father in 1911. In 1917 he became the president of the Winnecook Ranch Company, a post he occupied until his death in 1984.
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