ARTHUR NORRIS BRAGG 

 (I897-I968) 



"Regardless of how what I have done in my thirty or more years of the study of Amphibia in Oklahoma 

 may appeal to later generations, of what -false deductions and inadequate interpretations may appear in 

 my papers or of the many mistakes made, anyone interested in the development of natural history in the 

 Southwest must necessarily take what I have done (good, so-so, or bad) into account." The author of 

 these humble words, Arthur Norris Bragg, was born in Pittsfield, Maine on 18 December I897, and died in 

 Norman, Oklahoma on 27 August I968, less than two months after his retirement from active teaching at 

 the University of Oklahoma. 



Arthur N. Bragg was the fourth child of Nathan and Emma Bragg. When Bragg was six years old his 

 father died, and his mother was forced to support herself and her children. His early schooling was 

 irregular, because the family had to move frequently from place to place, living where Emma Bragg could 

 find work. Because of this unsettled life, his interest in unpopular things, and his clumsiness at 

 group activities he had few friends and was never popular as a boy. But life in rural Maine provided 

 ample opportunity for early development of an interest in observing nature. At the age of eight he first 

 heard a strange sound in a roadside ditch, which in later years he identified as the call of Rana 

 clami tans melanota . He recalled being much impressed at age nine by his first Clemmys guttata , which 

 he called his "polka-dotted turtle." 



Bragg's academic progress was slowed by almost overwhelming financial difficulties, but he never 

 gave up his goal of getting a college education. He graduated from highschool at 21, and entered Bates 

 College, in Lewiston, Maine in 1919' During these years he supported himself by working as a chef at 

 summer resorts in Maine and New Hampshire, as a cook for a logging crew, and by working in a wooled 

 factory, among other jcbs. Following his sophomore year he spent one year as principal of a grade school, 

 then returned to graduate from Bates in 1^24 . Bragg married Mary Kierstead on 24 December 1924. 



The next year Bragg went to Johns Hopkins University, where he became interested in protozoans 

 after taking classes under H. S. Jennings and S. 0. Mast. After one year at Hopkins he took a job as 

 Assistant Professor of Biology at Marquette University. During an eight-year stay at Marquette his 

 interest in invertebrates broadened, and he completed the manuscript for a textbook, unfortunately 

 never published, on invertebrate zoology. One summer was spent on the Maine coast, making illustrations 

 for the book from living animals. 



Leaving Marquette, Bragg went to Boston University for his M.A., and studied animal behavior and 

 entomology. His thesis topic was food vacuoles and selection :>f food by Paramec ium. and his first 

 publications dealt with Paramec ium . Bragg entered the University of Oklahoma in 193* to work on a 

 Ph.D. under A. Richards. He collected his first breeding pairs of Buf coqr.a tus in April, 1935> 

 for research on the mitotic cycle and mitotic distribution in early embryos. During the research for 

 his Ph.D, which he received in 1937> Bragg found yolk platelets in amphibian eggs and developed a 

 technique for determining the amount of cell division occuring at various places in an embryo of any 

 stage. This method (mitotic index) had never been applied to any amphibian, nor to any embryo derived 

 through holoblastic cleavage. His findings were published in well-known journals in 193B and 1 939 » 

 yet the general disregard of this work by others bothered him throughout his life. 



During the early days in Oklahoma two events of great importance occurred in the life of A. N. 

 Bragg. One was a developing friendship with Charles Clinton Smith, Sr., and the other was the start 

 of his interest in the genus Scaph i opus . In Smith, Bragg found an enthusiastic and sympathetic 

 associate, and their joint field trips set a pattern for the remainder of Bragg's life. In later 

 years he frequently told of the collecting trips when they would be out for days, catching naps in 

 corn fields or in the weeds beside a countyroad during the day, and hunting amphibians all night. 

 Regardless of how many hours he went without sleep, Bragg was never late for his classes, sometimes 

 returning with just enough time to clean up and go to the classroom. Bragg's interest in spadefoots 

 started unexpectedly. He had thousands of Buf o coqna tus tadpoles in a large tank, and agreed to share 

 the tank with another graduate student, Minnie Trowbridge, who was studying the development of Scaph i opus . 

 To their amazement, the Scaph i opus tadpoles ate the Buf o tadpoles: thus began the interest in Scaph i opus 

 that became the dominant theme of Bragg's scientific work. 



In the early 1940's Bragg developed progressive deafness, and had to wear a hearing aid. During the 

 last 15 years of his life he suffered from serious coronary disease, cataracts, and other medical 

 difficulties. These physical problems, and advancing age, made it necessary for him to work at a 

 slower pace, but he never failed to answer the call of the toads. Every spring except one, and every 

 summer except three between 1935 and 1968 he studied amphibians in the field in Oklahoma and adjacent 

 areas. He visited every county in Oklahoma at least once, and most of them many times. Thousands of 

 specimens were collected at all stages of development, and behavior and distribution were observed and 



We thank Mrs. Mary Kierstead Bragg for permission to use material from Bragg's unpublished autobiography 

 "The making of a naturalist." 



