The Prehistory of Biology at the Institute

'I owe a similar debt of gratitude to Professor Edward W. Claypole, whose Latin marginalia inscribed upon our notebooks in biology and the like, would now, I suppose, seem to be relics of an order of things that is no more.' -From the Preface to The Birds of the Latin Poets by Ernest W. Martin, Associate Professor of Greek, Stanford University, 1914.

The California Institute of Technology has a prehistory, a period from 1891 to 1920 when it was a local vocational school called Throop University, then Throop Polytechnic Institute, and then, as aspirations for it rose, Throop College of Technology. It was at a small campus north of downtown Pasadena (on Chestnut Street between Fair Oaks and Raymond), but since 1910 has been at the present location south and east of downtown. The first listed teacher of biology at Throop (which included a grammar school, high school, and college) was Alfred J. McClatchie, A.B., listed as the only biologist on the faculty in the catalogs from 1893 through the 1895-6 school year. In 1895 Ernest Bryant Hoag, B.S. (from Northwestern in 1892), A.B. (from Stanford in 1895) became Instructor in Biology. Hoag (1868-1924) was author of, among other works, Health Studies : Applied Physiology and Hygiene, published by D.C. Heath and Co. in 1909. The courses taught in this era were plant and animal physiology and classification, with a class in embryology and bacteriology started in 1895-6. 1897-8 marked the first (and for decades, the only) year a course in neurobiology, “Special Course in the Nervous System,” was taught.

In 1898 the Instructor in Geology and Biology was Edward Waller Claypole. From the 1899-1900 school year to 1901-1902 he was Professor of Geology and Biology, the first biologist listed as Professor. Claypole (1835-1901) was an Englishman educated at the University of London. He moved to the United States in 1872, teaching at a variety of colleges in a variety of subjects, from classics to biology to geology. He was, among other contributions to American science, a founder of the journal American Geologist, and was well-known for his studies of Devonian placoderms (armored fish).

Claypole had twin daughters, Agnes Mary Claypole (1870-1954) and Edith Jane Claypole (1870-1915). Both attended Buchtel College in Akron, Ohio, where Claypole was teaching at the time, and graduated in 1892. Both entered graduate school at Cornell. Edith earned an M.S. in 1893 with a thesis on the blood cells of amphibians; Agnes received an M.S. in 1894 with a thesis on the digestive tract of eels. Edith then went off to teach at Wellesley, while Agnes went to the University of Chicago, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1896. After two years at Wellesley, Edith entered the Cornell Medical school to earn a medical degree. Their father and stepmother moved to Pasadena in 1898, for reasons having to do with Mrs. Claypole’s health, and both daughters joined them. When Edward Claypole died in August 1901 (his wife following only a few weeks later), the daughters were appointed to the Throop faculty in his place. In 1902-1903 the catalog lists Agnes Mary Claypole as Instructor in Zoology, and Edith Jane Claypole as Instructor in Biology and Bacteriology. Edith left the faculty to complete her medical education at what is now UCLA, and Agnes was promoted. In 1903-4 Agnes M. Claypole was Professor of Natural Science and Curator, the first female biology professor in the Institute. She left after holding the position for only one year, however – she married Robert O. Moody, a professor of anatomy at U.C., Berkeley in 1903, and afterward moved to northern California (eventually joining the faculty at Mills College).

In the following school year at Throop, 1904-5, the sole biologist in the faculty list is Joseph Grinnell, Instructor in Natural Science, and Curator. Grinnell was the most prominent of the Throop biologists, in fact he was one of the great biologists of the 20th century. Born in 1877, he was a student in the college portion of Throop, receiving his A.B. in 1897. He was the third college graduate of Throop, the first graduating class having been two students in 1896, with Grinnell’s class, the class of 1897, a class of one. In the 1897-8 school year Grinnell was Assistant Instructor at Throop, he then went to Stanford to receive his A.M. in 1901, and to remain a graduate student until 1903. On his return from Stanford to Pasadena, he was appointed (1904-5) Instructor in Natural Science and Curator at Throop. In 1906 and 1907 he was Professor of Biology and Curator. He began his professional work as an ornithologist and herpetologist, in 1898 publishing the noted Birds Of The Pacific Slope Of Los Angeles County, published by the Pasadena Academy Of Sciences. In 1907 he was recruited to become the founding director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley, and from 1908 to his death in 1939 was the director as well as a renowned professor at Berkeley. He is considered the first important west coast mammalogist. Among his notable contributions is the concept of the ecological niche, which he first published in 1924, and the invention of the now-standard method of taking field notes on wildlife, in which journal entries, species accounts, and specimen catalogs are combined. He was an important advocate for the National Park system; his field studies at Yosemite from 1914 to 1924 (leading to the publication of Grinnell and Storer, Animal Life in the Yosemite, 1924) are still well known. Several of his books on California birds and mammals are still in print (available as reprints), nearly 100 years after they were written, and Grinnell Mountain in the San Bernardino range is named after him.

At Throop in 1906 and 1907 there was along with Grinnell another biologist, Lecturer Ernest Hoag (the same Hoag who had been Instructor from 1895-1898). In 1908-9 and 1909-1910 the Professor of Biology is listed as Carl Spencer Millikan, B.S. (from MIT in 1899); Hoag remains listed as Lecturer through 1909-1910. Millikan is listed as professor for the last time in the Throop catalog of April, 1910; that year the only biology course offered was zoology. Despite a promise that Botany would be offered in alternate years, the Throop catalogs from 1910-11 through 1915 list the biology courses as “not offered.” Biology courses are not listed thereafter, until the present Division was started in 1928. Nonetheless there was at least one lecture in biology after the 1910 cessation of the teaching of the subject, the March, 1911 lecture entitled “A Zoölogical Trip Through Africa” by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt.