Iguana 12.1


IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 47HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Thomas Barbour was born to a wealthy family on
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts in 1884. Much of

his inheritance was applied to his chosen life’s work, which,
after a winter in Florida and the Bahamas recuperating
from typhoid fever, focused largely on reptiles, the tropics,
and island faunas.

Growing up in New York, he built a collection of pre-
served reptiles, largely composed of specimens saved for him
by the zoo. The donation of this collection was his entrée to
the Museum of Comparative Zoology when he entered
Harvard College as a student. Barbour graduated in 1906,
continued for graduate study (A.M. 1908, Ph.D. 1911), and,
while still a graduate student, took over responsibility for the
museum’s collection of amphibians and reptiles in 1910.

After completion of his doctorate, Barbour became
Associate Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians. Until the
early 1920s, when he gave up curatorial responsibilities, he
tripled the number of species. Much of the growth is attrib-
uted to his own collecting throughout the world, but much
was the result of an aggressive exchange program with other
institutions and purchases out of his own pocket.

In 1923, Barbour became the executive officer charged
with the development of Barro Colorado Island, formerly
a forested hill that became an island when Gatun Lake was
formed during construction of the Panama Canal. Barbour
recognized the site’s potential for research, personally
bought out the banana growers, hired the first superin-
tendent, and supervised the construction of the first build-
ing on the site, which now serves as the Smithsonian

Tropical Research Institute. Barbour continued as executive
director until 1945.

Barbour also developed the domestic production of
snake antivenin. In 1926, he, Raymond Ditmars (see the
biographical sketch in Iguana 10(3):92), and other North
Americans, advised by Afrânio do Amaral, founded the
Antivenin Institute of America. The organization, which
included a venom-collecting serpentarium in Honduras
and an antivenin-producing laboratory in Pennsylvania,
also published a journal (Bulletin of the Antivenin Institute
of America) from 1927–1932, which Barbour funded and
co-edited. He also supported the journal of the American
Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (Copeia) by
covering its operating deficits for many years.

In 1927, Barbour became Director of the Museum of
Comparative Zoology and continued in that position for the
rest of his life. He liberally supported museum projects and
never drew a salary. Several noted herpetologists (e.g., Archie
Carr, Emmett Dunn, and G. Kingsley Noble) began their
careers under his guidance and benefited from his support.

Despite his influence on American herpetology, his own
research was rather diffuse and sometimes superficial (see also
Henderson and Powell. 2005. Thomas Barbour and the
Utowana expeditions (1929–1934) in the West Indies.
Bonner Zoologische Beiträge 52:297–309). His first two
monographs (1912 and 1914) covered the amphibians and
reptiles of the East and West Indies, respectively. The largest
fraction of his more than 200 subsequent herpetological titles
also addressed the West Indian herpetofaunas, continuing a
tradition of Harvard herpetologists that began with Samuel
Garman in the late 19th Century and continues to this day.

Major herpetological works included five editions of
checklists of North American amphibians and reptiles
(1917–1943, with Leonhard Stejneger), “Herpetology of
Cuba” (1919, with Charles Ramsden), “Sphaerodactylus”
(1921), “Antillean Terrapins” (1940, with Archie Carr), and
a semi-popular book entitled Reptiles and Amphibians and
Their Adaptations (1929, revised in 1943).

Despite his formal training, many accomplishments, and
numerous honors, Barbour was in many ways more of a
wealthy amateur than serious professional. In Naturalist at
Large (1943), one of four autobiographical books completed
shortly before his death in 1946, he provided a glimpse into
his complex life (p. 45).

B I O G R A P H I C A L  S K E T C H

Thomas Barbour (1884–1946)1

1 Source: Adler, K. 1989. Herpetologists of the past, pp. 5–141.
In K. Adler (ed.), Contributions to the History of Herpetology.
Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles,
Contributions to Herpetology, Number 5. Ithaca, New York.Thomas Barbour (photograph courtesy of Kraig Adler).