ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYOR 



By C. B. Davenport 

 INTRODUCTION 



This biography of Alfred Goldsborough Mayor is based largely upon a remarkable 

 document entitled "Autobiographical notes, by Alfred Goldsborough Mayor, written in response 

 to the request of the chairman of the committee upon biographical memoirs of the National 

 Academy of Sciences, January, 1917, with notes to 1919, inclusive." This manuscript had 

 been deposited, sealed, with the secretary of the academy. It is, indeed, the most extensive 

 document prepared in response to this call. The fact that Mayor had thus prepared it greatly 

 lightened the task of his biographer. It is to be hoped that other members of the academy 

 will be led by his example to prepare such autobiographies, as a part of the duty that they 

 owe to science. The manuscript of Mayor is often quoted here, and such quotations are 

 usually designated by the symbol (A. G. M., MSS.). Mayor compiled, with Dr. R. S. Wood- 

 ward, the National Academy's memoir of his father, and this is referred to as Mayer and 

 Woodward (1916). For data concerning the Goldsboroughs I am indebted to several members 

 of the family, and particularly to Mrs. Amelia F. Tyler, of Luray, Va., A. G. Mayor's mother's 

 sister. 



BIOGRAPHY 



Alfred Goldsborough Mayor * was born April 16, 1868, at his mother's father's home, 

 "Sunnyside," near Frederick, Md., son of Dr. Alfred Marshall Mayer, professor of physics at 

 Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., and Katherine Duckett Goldsborough, his wife. His 

 mother died May 2, 1868, at "Sunnyside," of puerperal fever (A. G. M., MSS.). After his 

 mother's death the infant was taken to his father's home at Bethlehem. When Alfred was 16 

 months old, Professor Mayer married a second time, Miss Maria Snowden, of Anne Arundel 

 County, Md. In 1874 Dr. Alfred M. Mayer became professor of physics at Stevens Institute, 

 and the family was brought to South Orange and later to Maplewood, N. J., where young 

 Alfred passed his boyhood. Alfred entered Stevens Institute at the age of 16 years and 

 pursued the engineering course, in consonance with his father's desire rather than his own 

 tastes. He graduated four years later, M. E., 1889, and was appointed assistant to Professor 

 Michaelson at Clark University, Worcester, Mass. Here he made many friends, but he stayed 

 only one year. He was assistant in physics under Professor Blake at the University of Kansas 

 from 1890 to 1892. He left there rather abruptly in the early spring of 1892 and came to 

 Harvard University to study biology; since his attempts at physics had been failures, due 

 largely to a dislike of the subject. 



At Harvard a new world opened to him, an opportunity to study zoology, following a 

 strong, apparently innate, bent. He took advanced courses in the subject and began research 

 on butterflies and moths, their colors, color patterns, and pigmentation in general. During 

 the summer of 1892 he was invited, with some other Harvard students of zoology, to study at 

 Alexander Agassiz's laboratory at Newport. Mr. Agassiz encouraged him to make drawings 

 and to observe the habits of the Medusae, and he was so successful that, before the summer 

 was over, Mr. Agassiz suggested that they cooperate in the preparation of an illustrated work 

 upon the Medusae of the Atlantic coast of North America. This quickly led to the close 

 association of Mayor with Agassiz in many of his trips. In the winter of 1892-93 Mayor served 

 as Agassiz's assistant upon his cruise in the chartered yacht Wild Duck in the Bahamas and 

 Cuba. In 1896 he went with Agassiz in the Croyden to the Barrier Reef of Australia, and 



1 "On August 5, 1918, the family name was changed from Mayer to Mayor by the Court of Common Pleas of Mercer County at Trenton, 

 New Jersey. The family having been loyal American citizens since 1785, it seemed but fitting to repudiate the last link of association which 

 bound us to a nation that had forced our country into the line of its enemies." A. G. M., MSS. See comment of Professor Mendenhall, Science, 

 Aug. 18, 1922. 



1 



