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Edward Sylvester Morse

Portland, Maine, 1838 - 1925, Salem, Massachusetts

BiographyMorse, Edward Sylvester (American zoologist and archaeologist, 1838-1925)

LC name authority rec. n82124207
LC Heading: Morse, Edward Sylvester, 1838-1925

Morse, Edward Sylvester (18 June 1838-20 Dec. 1925), biologist and expert on Japanese culture, was born in Portland, Maine, the son of Jonathan Kimball Morse and Jane Seymour Beckett. His father was a partner in a firm that dealt in beaver furs and buffalo robes, and his mother was said to be "interested in all branches of science." As a boy Morse collected shells, and at the age of seventeen he joined the Portland Society of Natural History. At the encouragement of other naturalists in the society, Morse began to study the land snails of his state and to correspond with leading American conchologists. After attending preparatory schools he worked as a draftsman in the locomotive shops of the Maine Central Railroad, presumably to save for college. There he demonstrated a fine ability in sketching and creating line drawings, which he used to advantage in his later publications.

From 1859 to 1862 Morse was enrolled as a special student in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University. He then became an assistant to zoologist Louis Agassiz in the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology, but he did not receive a degree. Morse's colleagues at Harvard included Alpheus Hyatt, Alpheus Spring Packard, Jr., Frederic Ward Putnam, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, and Addison Emery Verrill, who all had distinguished careers in science.

Morse married Ellen Elizabeth Owen in 1863; they had two children. He was rejected for service in the Union army during the Civil War (because of his teeth). In 1863 or 1864 he joined the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, at the urging of Putnam, who was from that city. The institute's museum contained items of natural history and ethnology deposited there through the years from Salem trading ships. Morse became responsible for the collection of shells, while Hyatt, Packard, Verrill, and Putnam worked on other collections. In 1867 George Peabody founded the Peabody Academy of Science (later Peabody Museum) in Salem, which obtained the buildings and anthropological collections of the East India Marine Society and the biological collections of the Essex Institute. The young scientists, except Verrill, transferred to it. The four founded in 1868 the American Naturalist, then the only U.S. publication in popular natural history. Morse wrote articles for it and drew many of its illustrations. He was also a lecturer to the general public on subjects in science, especially Darwinian evolution.

Morse became professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Bowdoin College from 1871 to 1874. In 1873 he was one of the teachers at the remarkably successful summer school for naturalists headed by Agassiz at Penikese Island, Massachusetts. Morse published the textbook First Book in Zoology in 1875. Continuing his studies on mollusks, he concluded that they were not closely related to brachiopods, in spite of a superficial resemblance. First from a study of the shells, then from a study of the internal organs and the development of the eggs, he deduced that brachiopods, now placed in a phylum of their own, were more closely related to worms.

Because a number of species of brachiopods had been documented in Japan, Morse traveled there in 1877 and set up a seaside laboratory at Enoshima. He was promptly invited to become professor of zoology at Imperial University in Tokyo, which had determined to improve its scholarly basis. He served in that post from 1877 to 1880, taking a keen interest in the people of Japan and their arts. Some of his students there became excellent zoologists.

On his return to the United States in 1880 Morse became director of the Peabody Museum in Salem until 1916, after which he served as emeritus director. He rearranged the museum's collections, invented a new kind of museum shelf bracket, improved the methods of display, and raised funds to enlarge the building.

Morse's scientific publications began with descriptions of new species of land snails in Maine and continued over many years with descriptions of other mollusks and the classification of brachiopods. As another scientific interest, through long acquaintance with astronomer Percival Lowell, he spent thirty-four nights at Lowell Observatory, observing Mars and recording it in sketches. He published Mars and Its Mystery in 1906 and was honored with membership in the astronomical societies of France and Belgium.

In Japan the chance discovery, observed from the train between Enoshima and Tokyo in 1877, of ancient shell heaps from aboriginal people led Morse from research on mollusks to the study of ancient pottery and to collecting Japanese pottery, including items from living potters. "The kinds he wanted are those bearing potters'-marks and specimens from every kiln and for every kind of use, all in the tradition of that old Japan of which he so keenly lamented the passing," wrote F. S. Kershaw of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1890 Morse placed his collection of pottery in that Boston museum, which purchased the collection two years later and appointed Morse its keeper. In 1901 the museum published his catalog of the collection, which was later translated into Japanese and published by the Japanese government. In 1898 Morse became the first American to receive the Medal of the Order of the Rising Sun from the emperor of Japan, and he also received the Medal of Sacred Treasure from that country.

While teaching in Japan and on a later trip in 1882-1883, Morse also took an interest in Japanese houses, on which he published Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (1888), illustrated with more than 300 of his own line drawings. He extended this interest to China on a trip there in 1882 and published Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes (1906).

Morse was considered by colleagues a good lecturer and fine raconteur, although prejudiced by antireligious views. He was a member of a number of scientific societies and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1886. He was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 1876. He died in Salem, Massachusetts.

Bibliography

Morse's extensive papers are at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., which has a complete bibliography of his publications. A detailed biography is Dorothy Wayman, Edward Sylvester Morse: A Biography (1942). Shorter tributes are by F. S. K[ershaw] in Museum Fine Arts Bulletin 24 (1926): 11-12; by J. S. Kingsley in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 61 (1925-1926): 549-55; and by L. O. Howard in National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoirs 17 (1935-1937): 1-29.

Elizabeth Noble Shor

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Citation:
Elizabeth Noble Shor. "Morse, Edward Sylvester";
http://www.anb.org/articles/13/13-01180.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Mon Aug 05 2013 17:09:16 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.

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