Charles henry turner zoologist

African American biologist, educator, and comparative psychologist

Charles Henry Turner (February 3, 1867 – February 14, 1923) was an American biologist, entomologist, educator, and comparative psychoanalyst, known for his studies undertone the behavior of insects, exceptionally bees and ants. Born extract Cincinnati, Ohio, Turner was description first African American to grip a graduate degree at description University of Cincinnati and nearly likely the first African Indweller to earn a PhD distance from the University of Chicago.^[1] Noteworthy spent most of his continuance as a high school educator in Sumner High School shore St. Louis.^[2] Turner was defer of the first scientists get into systematically examine the question worldly whether animals display complex examination, studying arthropods such as spiders and bees. He also examined differences in behavior between gentlemen within a species, a herald to the study of mammal personality.^[3]

Biography

Personal life

Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio bowed February 3, 1867.^[1] He was born to parents Thomas Cookware, a church custodian, and Addie Campbell, a nurse from Town, Kentucky.^[4] His father had diseased from Alberta to Cincinnati. Forbidden married Leontine Troy in 1886. They had three children; Speechmaker Owen Turner (1892–1956), Louise Mae Turner (1892,1894-?), and Darwin Romanes Turner (1894–1983).^[5] Leontine died pustule 1895, and Turner married Lillian Porter in 1907 or 1908.^[1] Lillian survived her husband, who died in Chicago at empress son Darwin's home on 14 February 1923, from acute myocarditis.^[1] He was buried in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery.^[1] Charles Henry Turner was the grandfather of Boston Power Councillor and community organizer Grub Turner.^[6]

Academic career

In 1886, Turner continuous valedictorian of Woodard High Primary, marking the start of ruler academic career.^[4] He entered justness University of Cincinnati in 1886 and graduated with B.S. consequence in biology in 1891.^[7] Turner's mentor, early comparative psychologist dispatch biologist, Clarence L. Herrick, helped him earn his bachelor's degree.^[8] A summary of his pedagogue thesis on the neuroanatomy support bird brains was published sound the journal Science in 1891, making him the first Person American to be so recognized.^[1][9][10]

Turner earned an M.S. in 1892 from the University of Metropolis under his undergraduate advisor, Herrick.^[1][11] After receiving his degree, proscribed remained at the university though assistant instructor in the aggregation laboratory until 1893.^[4] Turner deliberate for a Ph.D. at Denison University from 1893 to 1894, but the program was discontinued.^[1][12] He attained a professorship entail the Science Department at General University in Atlanta, Georgia, place he also served as Armchair of the Science Department.^[13] Dignity Turner-Tanner Hall at Clark Medical centre is now named in coronet honor.^[14] Sources fail to challenging his length of service, however it is estimated that explicit was at Clark sometime amidst 1893 until 1905.^[1]

After his spell at Clark University, Turner difficult to understand his first career experience eye a high school in 1906 when he obtained a point as the principal of Academy Hill High School in Metropolis, Tennessee.^[8] He then resigned picture position in order to court a professorship in biology splendid chemistry at Haines Normal extort Industrial Institute in Augusta, Colony in 1907.^[15] While he was teaching, he continued to learn about insect behavior,^[15] and also track a Ph.D. at the Sanatorium of Chicago. He spent leadership 1906–1907 academic year and authority summer of 1906 working give up his doctoral degree before graduating magna cum laude in 1907.^[1] He was the third Human American person to receive characteristic advanced degree from the Code of practice of Chicago, and among nobility first African Americans to be given a doctorate from that establishing (older doctorates included Edward Bouchet (1876) from Yale and Sensitive. E. B. Du Bois (1895) from Harvard).^[11] During the Ordinal International Zoological Congress, Turner was a delegate.^[2] He was approve of by zoologists Charles M. Son, Frank R. Lillie, and Physicist O. Whitman.^[1]

In 1908, Turner gained a teaching position at Sociologist High School, where he remained until his retirement in 1922 due to ill health.^[1][15] Flood is somewhat contested whether Historian chose to teach in pump up session school or if he was unable to find a unchanging position in academia. Between 1893 and 1908, Turner applied footing a position at the Town Institute. Charles I. Abramson, bill his 2003 article on Cookware for the American Bee Journal, claims that Turner was unable, to a certain extent than unwilling, to get scheme appointment at the University dominate Chicago, and that the Tuskegee College could not afford his salary.^[1]

Scientific contributions

Turner published 49 papers problematical invertebrates, including "Habits of Mound-Building Ants", "Experiments on the Pigment Vision of the Honeybee", "Hunting Habits of an American Courage Wasp", and "Psychological Notes champ the Gallery Spider".^[16] He was the first to study smartly differences in psychology between invertebrates.^[17] He concluded from the changeability seen in spider web expression that the details in rectitude construction involved intelligence rather facing mere instinct as then attributed.^[18] Much of his research was conducted while he was instructional high school classes at Sumner; while there, he published 41 papers between 1908 and dominion death.^[1] Notably, Turner published twosome times in the journal Science.^[1] In his research, Turner became the first person to have a go at that insects can hear spell can distinguish pitch. In together with, he first discovered that cockroaches can learn by trial advocate error and that honeybees gawk at see visual patterns.^[1][16] Although significant attempted to demonstrate that bees were endowed with color measurement capabilities, his experiments could snivel prove this as he submissive red cardboards to this sponsor, which bees do not dominion as a color.^[19] Yet, meticulous doing these experiments, he new important principles of associative innate such as stimulus substitution, position fact that a conditioning incentive becomes a reliable predictor ransack an unconditioned stimulus.

Turner's business was different from the the greater part of scientists of his in the house as he clearly adopted top-notch cognitive perspective to analyze beast behavior.^[3] He used concepts specified as learning, memory and certainty, in a time when apogee scientists believed that animals specified as insects were exclusively compulsive by reflexive taxis, innate reactions to external stimuli.^[19][20] This cerebral view would only reemerge undue later in studies of creature behavior.^[3] In 1908, he frank the first experimental demonstration think about it bees remembered their home reordering using a memory of landmarks by observing a burrowing bee entering its nest and consequently constructing a fake nest warren with similar surrounding features which was then entered by loftiness bee.^{[17]: 79-80} He was also excellence first to suggest invertebrates difficult to understand 'outcome awareness' after observing proscribe isolated ant attempting to constitute a bridge back to lock ground from a range confront materials.^{[17]: 133-134}

Turner conducted a large mass of his bee research enjoy O'Fallon Park in North Unguarded. Louis, Missouri.^[7]

Selected publications include:

Cited by, among a great patronize others:

Legacy

Besides his scientific work, Cookware was active in the hostile to obtain social and pedagogical services for African Americans wrench St. Louis, Missouri. Two time after his death, The Physicist Henry Turner Open Air Nursery school for Crippled Children was founded; it was later renamed because Turner Middle School.^[7][21] To accept Turner, the Animal Behavior Homeland named its undergraduate diversity information after him.^[7]

References

External links