Notable Students
Among the names of those who attended sessions at the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, one finds an extended list of notable Stanford graduates who spent one or more summers of their academic experience attending the teaching and research facility. Several of these notable students would become pioneers in experimental biology, others leaders in the areas of education and conservation. Below presents the beginnings of a list of the many notable students who spent a summer or more at the seaside laboratory.
Anton Julius Carlson - (Stanford, Ph. D. Physiology, 1903) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in 1900, occupied investigator room 1901, 1902 and 1903]. Professor of Physiology and Chairman of the Physiology Department at the University of Chicago from 1916 until 1940.
Bertha L. Chapman (Mrs. V. M. Cady) - (Stanford, A. B. English, 1895) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, 1897]. Leading Instructor of Nature Study and Lecturer on Hygiene.
Rheinhart P. Cowles - (Stanford, A. B. Chemistry, 1899) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory 1897, 1898 and laboratory assistant 1899]. Professor of Zoology at John Hopkins University, Master thesis advisor and mentor to Rachael Carson. Quoting from the book Rachel Carson: Author/Ecologist by E. A. Tremblay (2003):
"It was he [Rheinhart P. Cowles] who helped her figure out how to go about doing her research. In her last year at PCW [Pennsylvania College for Women], with no one to teach her advanced laboratory techniques, she had not been able to learn some of the skills she now felt she needed, but Cowles took her under his wing.... When Carson arrived at Johns Hopkins, she learned to her delight that her faculty advisor would be none other than Reinhart P. Cowles, the scientist who had been her mentor at Woods Hole. With his blessing, she set right to work, continuing her laboratory explorations of reptilian nervous systems—which she hoped would prove a fruitful subject for the graduate thesis she would have to write to earn her degree.... Professor Cowles helped her in another way by suggesting a new topic for her master’s thesis, one that would be easier and quicker to complete, and more likely to yield useful results than had her study of reptiles. This time she would be investigating the urinary systems offish—actually trying to discern the functions of a kidney-like organ in certain species. To her relief, the experiments went well and led to an essay that was praised by academic referees—professors who judge original academic work. At the end of 1932, at long last, she received her master’s degree." (7)
Bradley Moore Davis - (Stanford, A. B. Botany, 1892) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in 1892, occupied investigators room in 1895]. Assistant Professor of Plant Morphology at the University of Chicago. BM Davis also held a position at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he was Director of the Department of Botany and at the Bureau of Fisheries.
Charles Wilson Greene - (Stanford A. B., Physiology, 1892; A. M., Physiology, 1893) [Laboratory assistant of Physiology during the summer session 1892, Instructor of Physiology 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1900, occupied investigators room in 1902, 1906 and 1911]. Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Missouri where he reorganized the Physiological Department into a center for research and teaching and set up the first laboratory of experimental pharmacology in the Mississippi Valley.
Joseph Grinnell - (Stanford, A. M., Zoology, 1901; Ph. D., Zoology, 1913) [Laboratory assistant during the summer session of 1900, Instructor 1901 and 1902]. Served as the first Director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley from the museum's inception in 1908 until his death in 1939.
Agnes E. Howe - (Stanford, A. B., Economics, 1897) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory 1894 and 1895]. Miss Agnes E. Howe began her teaching career of fifty-four years in the state of Iowa at the age of 15. In 1885, she came to California's Ojai Valley, where she earned $60 a month, as an instructor to sixty pupils in an eighth-grade school. Upon leaving Ojai in 1889, she instructed in Ventura, then entered and completed Stanford University. (8) In 1897, she next joined the faculty at California State University of San Jose, where she taught history, economics, and civics for more than 21 years. (9) In 1910, she was elected the first woman to serve as President of the California Teachers Association, (10) and later served as the Superintendent of Schools of Santa Clara County from 1919-1923. (11)
Adelaide Lowry Pollock - (Stanford, A. B., Physiology, 1901) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in 1892, 1894, 1895, 1897, 1899, 1900, 1901]. Graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Stanford and later earned an M. A. (Master of Arts) from the University of Washington. In 1864, Adelaide Pollock’s family had brought her as a four-year-old by wagon train to Oregon from Cedar Falls. Iowa. She completed courses at San Jose Normal School in 1888, taught briefly in Seattle, Washington, and in 1895 broke new ground in Stockton, California, as its first woman principal. She retired from the Seattle district on her return from war service in France with the Red Cross but continued to influence her former colleagues and their younger successors. Adelaide Pollock, who traced ancestors to the American Revolution, embodied the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant values that stamped the Seattle school system and its corps of principals before World War II. (12)
Below: Photograph of Norman B. Scofield - (Stanford, A. B., Zoology, 1895, A. M. Zoology, 1897)
Norman B. Scofield - (Stanford, A. B., Zoology, 1895, A. M. Zoology, 1897) [Student at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in 1893 and 1894]. Mr. Scofield received his academic training in zoology at Stanford University and was a member of that University 's first graduating class in 1895. For 42 years, Norman Scofield was director of the California Department of Marine Fisheries Program (i.e. Director of the California Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of State Division of Fish and Game). The Memoriam published in the Bulletin for California Fish and Game for NB Scofield stated:
Through his foresight and effort, the California Department of Fish and Game's Marine Resources program was established. Especially noteworthy was his leadership in setting up a catch statistics system for the state's fisheries, upon which the conservation program is based and on which similar systems throughout the world have been modeled. (13)
According to WK Fisher:
With the aid of Mr. N. B. Scofield of the State Fish and Game Commission a bill was introduced at the last meeting of the Legislature to create a marine-life refuge of the Station point and 1,000 feet seawards. This bill became a law August 14, 1931. The reservation created is known as the Hopkins Marine Life Refuge and is intended to conserve and protect the shore and shallow-water life which has suffered greatly from depredation during the past ten years. (14)
Alvin W. Seale - (Stanford, A. B., Zoology, 1905) [Attended Hopkins Seaside Laboratory Summer Session in 1894 and 1905]. As a respected ichthyologist and world authority on the fishes of Polynesia, Alvin Seale was recruited by Barton W. Evermann of the California Academy of Sciences to assist in the planning of the Steinhart Aquarium being built in Golden Gate Park. When it opened in 1923, he was appointed Superintendent, and held that post until his final retirement in 1941, at the age of 70. (15)
Charles D. Snyder - (Stanford, A. B. Physiology, 1896) [Attended Hopkins Seaside Laboratory Summer Session in 1896]. Professor of Experimental Physiology at Johns Hopkins University.
Nettie Maria Stevens - (Stanford, A. B., Physiology 1899; A. M., Physiology, 1900) [Attended Hopkins Seaside Laboratory Summer Session in 1897, 1898 as a student, Occupied Investigators Room 1899, 1900, 1901, 1911]. Associate in Experimental Morphology at Bryn Mawr College, one of the first researchers to describe the chromosomal basis of sex.
Below: Photograph of Clara Stoltenberg - (Stanford, A. B., Physiology, 1896; A. M., Physiology, 1897). Clara Stoltenberg participated in seven of the twenty-three years regular sessions of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory. As a participating Stanford student in the summer of 1894; in the position of Assistant Instructor during the summers of 1896; in the position of Instructor during the summers of 1906, 1907, 1908 and Occupying Investigators Room during the summer of 1899.
Clara Stoltenberg - (Stanford, A. B., Physiology, 1896; A. M., Physiology, 1897) [Miss Stoltenberg took part in seven of the twenty-three years of regular sessions of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory; attending as a Stanford student in the summer of 1894; in the position of Assistant Instructor during the summer of 1896; occupying an investigators room during the summer of 1899 and in the position of Instructor during the summers of 1906, 1907 and 1908]. Professor of Anatomy at Stanford University; one of only two women to attain the rank of Professor during Stanford's first four decades.
Thomas Andrew Storey - (Stanford, A. B., History, 1896, A.M., Physiology, 1900, Ph. D., 1902) [Attended Hopkins Seaside Laboratory Summer Session in 1897]. Professor and Director of the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education, Stanford University. At Stanford, 1896-1906 and 1926-1943. Emeritus 1940.
Below: Photograph of Ray Lyman Wilbur - (Stanford, A. B., Physiology, 1896, A.M., Physiology, 1897; M.D. Cooper Medical College, 1899)
Ray Lyman Wilbur - (Stanford, A. B., Physiology, 1896, A.M., Physiology, 1897; M.D. Cooper Medical College, 1899) [Attended Hopkins Seaside Laboratory Summer Session in 1895 and 1896]. Third President of Stanford University, Secretary of the Interior during the Herbert Hoover administration. At Stanford, 1894-1897, 1900-1903, and 1909-1949. President of the University, 1916-1943, Chancellor of the University, 1943-1949.
Margaret Wilhelmina Wythe - (University of California, Berkeley, M.S. 1923) [Attended Seaside Laboratory Summer Sessions of 1893, 1894, and 1898]. In 1912, Margaret Wythe became the assistant to Joseph Grinnell as curator of birds at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley earning $0.35 per hour. In 1923, she received her Master's degree and in 1925 was promoted to Assistant Curator of Birds. One of the more famous books published by Grinnell and Margaret W. Wythe was "Directory of the Bird-Life of the San Francisco Bay Region" in 1927.
Footnotes
(7) Tremblay, E. A. (2003): Rachel Carson: Author/ecologist (Women in Science). Chelsea House Publication.
(8) Seward Source: California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1938), pp. 28-40 Published by: California Historical Society).
(9) Gilbert, Benjamin Franklin- Pioneers for One Hundred Years. San Jose State College, 1857-1957.
(11) Santa Clara County Office of Education: County Superintendents. Retrieved on January 24, 2014 from http://www.sccoe.org/aboutsccoe/Pages/County-Sups.aspx
(13) California Fish and Game (1959). Norman B. Scofield. In Memoriam State of California, Resources Agency, Department of Fish and Game. 45 (1) 60.
(14) Fisher, W. K. (1930-1931). Annual Report Of The President, Stanford University. Office of the President. 1930-1931.
(15) Radcliffe, Jane. Biological Sketch of Alvin Seal (1871-1958). California Academy of Science. Retrieve on January 13, 2014 from http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/library/special/bios/Seale.pdf