xvi Foreword 



now, as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, but was thereafter able to devote full 

 time to his interests at Harvard University. 



Harvard University appears to have been a bit slow in recognizing the merits 

 of Henry Bigelow. Tradition has it that, during his first year of service as assistant 

 in the invertebrate zoology laboratory, he discovered a student who had depicted a 

 tunicate embellished with a complete set of neatly labelled mammalian viscera, 

 based rather on " natural logic " than on direct observation. This intellectual dis- 

 honesty, or stupidity, so enraged him that the unfortunate student was told off in 

 words so monosyllabic and unambiguous that the young assistant was never again 

 to be permitted to have contact with the students in Harvard College. While the 

 inference is perhaps apocryphal there is no doubt that the incident is authentic. 



However this may be, so far as Harvard College was concerned Henry 

 Bigelow remained relatively obscure, serving as curator and lecturer in the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology up to the time of the events leading to the establishment of 

 the Oceanographic Institution. This may have resulted from the almost complete 

 lack of intercourse between the Museum and the Department of Zoology during the 

 period when these institutions existed under the same roof. At all events, it was a 

 most fortunate state of affairs, for had he been burdened with the ordinary academic 

 routine his achievements during this period would have been impossible. It is a 

 tribute to the liberal policies of the University at that time that such great talent was 

 enabled to fruit without distraction. 



In 1931 Henry Bigelow became a full professor at Harvard and inaugurated a 

 course in biological oceanography. Some years later this course passed into the 

 hands of one of his disciples. Dr. George L. Clarke, and Bigelow took over instruc- 

 tion in invertebrate zoology. This was a task he could put his heart into for he felt 

 that nowhere else is the wonderful diversity of form with which organisms are en- 

 dowed so well displayed as among the invertebrates. His obligation as a professor 

 to the students in Harvard College was to him most sacred. It is too bad they could 

 not have had more of him. Those who benefitted most from his talents as a teacher 

 (and taskmaster) were the succession of graduate students, both men and women, 

 who had the privilege of working at his side in the Museum, and those whom he in- 

 fluenced by indirection at the Oceanographic Institution or wherever else he came in 

 contact with thinking people. 



As the years passed the counsel of Henry Bigelow, early recognized for its 

 worth in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, became more and more influential 

 in the Department of Biology and in Harvard University at large. On reaching the 

 ordinary age of retirement the University asked him to continue in service, a very 

 real honour, until the mandatory age of seventy was reached. In 1946 he was granted 

 an honorary degree by Harvard and in the same year by the University of Oslo, 

 similar recognition having been made by Yale University some years earlier. 



Among other formal honours he is the recipient of the Johannes Schmidt Medal, 

 the Agassiz Medal awarded by the National Academy of Sciences for contributions 

 to Oceanography, and the Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 

 recognition of accomplishment through cooperative effort in the advancement of 

 the geophysical sciences. He has also been elected to membership in the National 

 Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Philosophical 

 Society, and is affiUated with the Norske Videnskaps Academy, the Royal 



