Kofoid, Charles Atwood

(b. Granville, Illinois, 11 October 1865; d. Berkeley, California, 30 May 1947)

zoology.

Kofoid’ career reflects the changing nature of instituional support for science, and he clearly exemplifies the increasingyly profgessional nature of American scientific endeavor. Born a Midwesterner, the son of Nelson Kofoid and the former Janet Blake, he completed his baccalaureate at Oberlin in 1890. He immediately took up graduate work at Harvard, completing his doctorate in 1894. He taught for one year at the University of Michigan and in 1895 was appointed director of the Biological Station at the University of Illinois. He investigated plankton and suspended life systems in the Illinois River and developed new techniques of biological survey to sutdy these systems.

In 1901 he became a member of the zoology department of the University of California. He became chairman of the department in 1910 and retained that post, with a leave from 1919 to 1923, until his retirement in 1936. He trained about sixty doctoral students, edited the University of California Publications in Zoology for twenty-six years and bequeathed a valuable library to the university.

Anyone who has had the privilege of using the great resources of the kofoid Collection in the Biology Library of the University of California at Berkeley is aware of the debt of the life sciences to Kofoid. His personal bookplate, which depicts the world of marine biology, protozoology, and parasitology, testifies to his wide interests and enthusiasms. At present the Kofoid Collection consists of about 31,000 volumes and 46,000 pamphlets; a third of these volumes can be classified as rare books. During his career he supported from his own purse a number of deserving graduate students.

Kofoid’s research centered on the plankton and pelagic life of the pacific ocean. He pucvlished many articles and monographs on dinoflagellates and tintinnids. New collection techniques and a more systematic attach upon the probelms of marine biology resulted from his work. He accompanied Alexander Agassiz on one voyage (1904-1905) and retained a lifelong interest in the implications of a Darwinian approach to biology. After a visit to the Far East in 1915-1916, he became interested in rumen ciliates and general parasitology. Although his system od classifyin ciliates is not universally accepted, distinguished workes in the field still follow it. In World WAr I he served as a major in the Sanitary Corps and worked on hookworm and general parasitology. Later he served as director of the California State Parasitological Division, and from research in this area he published a long series of papers on the parasitic protozoa in man.

Applied biology interested kofoid, and he studied shipworms and termites in the San Francisco Bay area. In the interests of a more systematic approach to biological research, he played an instrumental role in founding what is now called the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California. He helped establish Biological Abstracts and served as editor of its general biology section for many years . He served as an associate editor of Isis and other journals. He is credited with the development of the plankton net, a deep sea water sampler and self-closing plankton net for horizontal towing.

Kofoid was a vigorous and dedicated scientist. The Very range of his research interests may have blunted his ability to achieve outstanding prominence in any one field. He exemplifies the inherent difficulties of American biology at a time when it was maturing; and he gave it dignity and helped shape its direction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bulk of Kofoid’s published work is in article form, and the long titles preclude full citations here. He wrote extensively on marive protozoology up to about 1930. Thereafter parasitic protozoology tended to occupy his interests, with specific focus on amebiasis, trypanosomiasis, and rumen ciliates. He published in a wide variety of journals, but the majority of his important works after 1911 are in University of California Publications in Zoology; representative samples can be found in nearly every issue, many of his articles being co-authored with others in his department.

Kofoid edited Termites and Termite Control (Berkeley, 1934). See also Marine Borers and Their Relation to Marine Comstruction on the Pacific Coast (San Francisco, 1927), ch. 12 in G. N. Calkins and F. M. Summers, eds., protozoa in Scientific Research (New York, 1941).

For an obituary by Harold Kirby, see Science,106 (1947), 462-463.

Pierce C. Mullen