Karl Patterson Schmidt - Career

Career

From 1916 to 1922, he worked as scientific assistant in herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, under the well-known American herpetologists Mary Cynthia Dickerson and Gladwyn K. Noble. He made his first collecting expedition to Puerto Rico in 1919, then became the assistant curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1922. From 1923 to 1934, he made several collecting expeditions for that museum to Central and South America, which took him to Honduras (1923), Brazil (1926) and Guatemala (1933-1934). In 1937, he became the editor of the herpetology and ichthyology journal Copeia, a post he occupied until 1949. In 1938, he served in the U.S. Army. He became the chief curator of zoology at the Field Museum in 1941, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. From 1942 to 1946, he was the president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH). In 1953, he made his last expedition, which was to Israel.

Schmidt died in 1957 after being bitten by a juvenile boomslang snake (Dispholidus typus), which had been sent to his lab at the Field Museum in Chicago for identification by Marlin Perkins, who was then the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo. Schmidt underestimated the severity of the snakebite and, as a result, did not seek medical treatment until it was too late to counteract the effects of the boomslang's venom. He died 28 hours after the bite.

Schmidt was one of the most important herpetologists in the 20th century. Though he made only a few important discoveries by himself, he named more than 200 species. His donation of over 15,000 titles of herpetological literature formed the foundation for The Karl P. Schmidt Memorial Herpetological Library located at the Field Museum.