36 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE You XXVII, 1920 
Call’s parents lived in Des Moines, and for a period of many years, 
even while his employment took him into distant states, he usually spent 
the summers with them. During this time his extensive collection 
of shells and his fine scientific library were housed in the Capital City. 
He was the author of many memoirs, mainly upon subjects of Conch- 
ology. 
Richard Ellsworth Call was born on May 13, 1856, in Brooklyn, New 
York, where his early education was obtained in the public schools. 
From high school he went to Cazenovia Seminary, from which he was 
graduated in 1875. Then he attended Syracuse University, but did not 
remain to finish the prescribed course. While there he fell in at Ithaca with 
David Starr Jordan, John C. Branner, and other Cornell scientists of 
that day, who in after years were closely associated with his investi- 
gations. Leaving college he taught country school for several years, 
at the same time devoting his leisure hours to collecting and studying in 
natural history. In the meanwhile his parents moved to Des Moines. 
During the years 1890 and 1891 he attended Indiana State University, 
receiving the A. B. and A. M. degrees. In 1893 he finished the medical 
course at the Hospital College of Medicine of Louisville, Kentucky", 
graduating with the degree of M. D. Ohio University, at Athens, con- 
ferred upon him the honorary degree of Ph. D. in 1895. He died in 
New York City on March 14, 1917. 
Call’s principal vocation was teaching. He was connected with the 
schools all his life. Besides instructing in the sciences in the high 
schools of Stonington, Connecticut, Moline, Des Moines, Louisville, 
Brooklyn and New York City, he occupied for a time the Chair of Zoology 
in the Missouri State University. He served as curator of the Brooklyn 
Institute of Arts and Sciences; and for periods of three years each he 
performed the duties of superintendent of Schools of David City Ne- 
braska, and of Lawrenceburg, Indiana. He was an able and entertaining 
lecturer, and his services in this field were much sought. His work as 
lecturer for* the Board of Education of New York City was especially 
noteworthy and satisfactory. 
Of his more productive work in pure science there was wide range. 
In geology his efforts were mainly of the reconnaissance type. Yet he 
published a number of geological memoirs of note. Joining the staff of 
the United States Geological Survey, which was then studying the old 
desiccated Lake Bonneville — the all but vanquished remnant of which 
is the Great Salt / Lake of today, from the clays and sands of the old 
beaches of that vast ancient body of water he collected the molluscan 
shells, endeavoring to show by their depauperate character that they lived 
under the inhospitable environment of a glacial climate, to which Gilbert 
ascribed the origin of this great expanse of inland waters. Some of the 
forms unearthed proved to be new to science, and were so described. 
After similar fashion he worked with the late W J McGee on the 
loess shells of central Iowa. Notwithstanding the fact that depauperate 
forms are found to be abundant at Des Moines, in other parts of the 
state they were not detected by subsequent investigators. Later, also, 
the loess itself was demonstrated to be not a deposit derived from the 
glaciers but an interglacial formation. However, together, McGee and 
