HENRY BRYANT BIGELOW (1879-1967)

Henry Bryant Bigelow was born in Boston on October 3, 1879, into a wealthy and distinguished Back Bay family. His upbringing included summers at Cohasset and family trips to Europe, and as a youth he had the leisure and means to explore nature and develop skill as a sportsman and seaman. He graduated from Milton Academy at the age of 16 and spent a year working with Alpheus Hyatt at the Boston Natural History Museum and attending biology courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before entering Harvard.

As an undergraduate in 1900, Bigelow joined his first expedition, the Brown-Harvard Expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador led by R. A. Daley. In 1901 he persuaded Alexander Agassiz to invite him on an expedition to the Maldive Islands, an expedition Bigelow extended into a trip around the world. Bigelow's extensive travels acquainted him with all the major centers for the study of marine biology and with the leading figures in the field at the time. Oceanography was in its infancy, a pursuit for gentlemen scientists and yachtsmen, a group in which Bigelow fit very comfortably. Bigelow was to become the preeminent American oceanographer of his generation, but he began his intellectual life as a zoologist concentrating on cytology, systematics, taxonomy, and zoogeography. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1901 and continued graduate studies in zoology with G. H. Parker and E. L. Mark.

Bigelow accompanied Agassiz on the 1905 Albatross expedition to the eastern tropical Pacific the year after he received an A.M. degree. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1906. His early scientific reputation was established with his studies of birds and of medusae, published in the Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, but he is perhaps best known for his study of the Gulf of Maine, a subject suggested to him by Sir John Murray in 1911. Bigelow directed a comprehensive decade-long study of the gulf with the joint support of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) and the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries that resulted in the publication of three monographs and a dozen papers and transformed the gulf from a mere incognitum to one of the best known areas of the ocean. It also transformed Bigelow from a zoologist to an oceanographer. Bigelow attributed his 1931 election to the National Academy of Sciences to his Gulf of Maine work.

Bigelow's work on the gulf was briefly interrupted by his wartime service as navigator of the U.S. Army Transport Amphion. Fortunately, both Bigelow and Amphion survived an unequal naval engagement with a German submarine. Before and after the war, Bigelow gained important posts on the U.S. Shipping Board and as a consultant to the U.S. Coast Guard engaged in work for the International Ice Patrol, in addition to his position as a curator and lecturer at the MCZ at Harvard. These experiences allowed Bigelow to develop unique expertise in hydrography. Work with the North American Committee on Fishery Investigation and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea strengthened Bigelow's research ties to Canada and his friendship with A.G. Huntman, forged during the Gulf of Maine studies. This work also brought Bigelow into close contact with European leaders in oceanography and fisheries including Bjorn Helland-Hansen, Johan Hjort, and Johannes Schmidt.

In 1927, Bigelow was selected by the National Academy of Sciences to serve as secretary and later chair of their Committee on Oceanography, charged to describe and find means to strengthen oceanographic research in the United States. Bigelow's report led to the establishment of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to provide substantial support for programs in marine biology and oceanography at Woods Hole, the University of Washington, and the Bermuda Biological Station. This report also set a national oceanographic research agenda.

Bigelow declined an opportunity to become director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography but accepted the honor of becoming the first director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a position he held for 10 years concomitant with his appointment as a full professor at Harvard. As director, Bigelow selected a talented and diverse faculty of scientists and trained them as oceanographers, and he established a curriculum and attracted students, including Columbus Iselin and Mary Sears. He continued his research and was distinguished as editor in chief, with W. C. Schroeder, of Fishes of the Western North Atlantic. Bigelow served Woods Hole as Chairman of the Board of Trustees and then as honorary trustee, maintaining close contact with the institution for the rest of his life. He retired from Harvard in 1946 but continued his association with the Museum of Comparative Zoology until his death.

Bigelow's honors included the Agassiz Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union, the Johannes Schmidt Medal of the Carlsburg Foundation, and the Monaco Medal of the Institut Oc‚anographique. He was the first recipient of the Henry Bryant Bigelow Medal of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Henry Bigelow died on December 11, 1967, at his home in Concord, Massachusetts.

Deborah Day

Scripps Institution of Oceanography
La Jolla, California