Nasf Y 0F SciENCES l BIOGRAPHY 3 



The activity of the Tortugas laboratory is indicated by the nearly 4,500 quarto pages and 

 500 plates resulting from researches done under its auspices. Just to gather together these 

 papers, to prepare them for and see them through the press was a great task, mostly performed 

 during the autumn and winter. At the same time he was engaged in writing up his own researches. 

 In addition he undertook personal researches in or led parties into other parts of the world. In 

 1907-8 he studied marine life off the coast of Cornwall, England, and at the Naples Marine 

 Biological Station he spent a delightful winter investigating medusa?. During the period from 

 1912 to 1916 he visited the various West Indian Islands seeking a site for a permanent labo- 

 ratory. In 1913 he went with a party consisting of Frank A. Potts, of Cambridge University, 

 and Drs. Clark, Harvey, and Tennant from America to Murray Island in Torres Straits, Aus- 

 tralia, and the Island of Papua. Here echinoderms, Crustacea, and corals were studied, ecolog- 

 ically and physiologically; later the party traveled eastward via Java and Europe, thus com- 

 pleting the voyage around the world. In 1917, he went to Tutuila, Samoa, to study the prob- 

 lems of coral reefs and growth-rate of corals in the Pacific, and to this island he returned in 

 1918-19 in company with Prof. R. A. Daly, of Harvard, and Mr. John W. Mills, the engineer 

 of the department. At this time Mayor studied the submerged seaward slope of the coral reefs 

 and planted out, weighed, measured, and photographed corals down to 50 feet of depth. In 

 May-July, 1920, he studied at Samoa and at Fiji, for the last time. 



During most of the period of his connection with the Carnegie Institution of Washington 

 Mayor's home was in Princeton. In 1910-11 and again in 1915 to his death he held an honorary 

 appointment of lecturer in biology at Princeton. Among other appointments and honors 

 received by Mayor were the following: In 1904, after retiring from the Brooklyn Institute of 

 Arts and Sciences the trustees gave hint the complimentary title of "Honorary curator of Natural 

 sciences." From 1903, he served on the scientific coimcil of the New York Aquarium, and for 

 some years after as a member of the board of trustees of the marine biological laboratory at 

 Woods Hole. He was president of the Cambridge Entomological Club in 1899; president of the 

 eastern branch of the American Society of Zoologists, 1913; vice president of the Washington 

 Academy of Sciences in 1915. In 1916 he was elected a member of the National Academy of 

 Sciences. Other societies of which he was a member and in which he took an active part were: 

 The New York Zoological Society, fellow and patron; the American Society of Naturalists, the 

 Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadel- 

 phia, and the American Philosophical Society. 



During the World War Mayor's activities were for a time directed into war work. The 

 Anton, Dohrn was leased to the United States Navy from July, 1917, to November, 1918, to 

 serve as a patrol boat, guarding Key West Harbor. In August, 1917, Mayor passed the exami- 

 nations for a first-class mariner's license for seagoing yachts and then taught navigation to 

 enlisted men of the Navy who, being under age, were permitted to return to their studies at 

 Princeton University. In the autumn of 1918 he taught seamanship in the student's Army 

 training corps at Princeton University up to the time of the armistice. In connection with this 

 work he published a booklet on "Navigation, illustrated by diagrams." 



After two years of ill health, he died on June 24, 1922. 



PHYSICAL TRAITS 



Mayor was about 67 inches tall — slightly under the average stature of Anglo-Saxons. His 

 mother was 2 inches below the average stature of women and his father was also not tall. He 

 remained always lithe and slender. 



His eyes were blue, like those of both parents, deep set, and capable of the liveliest expres- 

 sion. His brown hair, even as cut close, had a marked wave, and it is stated that he had ringlets 

 as a small child. His mother's hair was quite straight, but his father's was curly, and 

 the gene for this trait came, doubtless, from the paternal side. Mayor did not have thick hair 

 from early youth, if ever. By 40 it was sparse on top, though there was no baldness. His 

 father had similar sparse hair. His face was rather short and broad, with fairly high cheek bones 

 like his father's. He had a rather large chin, like his mother. His step was quick and short. 



