Iguana 13.1 b&w text


IGUANA  •  VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2006 61HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Raymond Bridgman Cowles (1896–1975) was born in
South Africa, but educated in the United States, receiv-

ing a doctorate from Cornell in 1928. He spent most of his
professional life at UCLA, where he started out as an
instructor in 1929 and became a full professor in 1947.
Important work, besides the paper covered here, includes a
1952 paper in Science on infrared receptors of pit vipers and
two books, Zulu Journal: Field Notes of a Naturalist in South
Africa (1959) and Desert Journal: A Naturalist Reflects on Arid
California (1977). He retired in 1963 and died in 1975.1

Charles Mitchill Bogert (1908–1992) was born in
Colorado and studied with Raymond Cowles at

UCLA, receiving his Master’s degree in 1936. He then
joined the American Museum of Natural History, where he
eventually became the curator and chairman of the her-
petology department. His collecting work took him to
many parts of the world, and Mexico was a particular
favorite. In 1946, he became the first president of the
Herpetologists’ League, one of many posts he held for the
major American herpetological societies. Besides the ther-
moregulation studies for which he is most famous, Bogert
also published a 1956 monograph with Rafael Martín del
Campo, The Gila Monster and Its Allies, which was reprinted
by SSAR in 1993, and Sounds of North American Frogs,
released by Folkways Records in 1958. He died in 1992.2

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

Charles Bogert photographing a Gila Monster (Heloderma sus-
pectum). Photograph courtesy of Kraig Adler.

Raymond Cowles noosing a lizard. Photograph courtesy of Kraig
Adler.

1 For more information, see http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/
chronob/COWL1896.htm or Copeia 1977:611–612.

2 For more information, see http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/
chronob/BOGE1908.htm or Copeia 1993:264–266.

Artwork by David M. Dennis from the cover of the 1974 reprint of this classic study.

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