Alexander Grant Ruthven

Alexander Grant Ruthven (April 1, 1882 – January 19, 1971) was a herpetologist, zoologist and the President of the University of Michigan from 1929 to 1951.

Biography

Alexander Grant Ruthven was born in 1882 in Hull, Iowa. He graduated from Morningside College in 1903. In 1906, he received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Michigan. He worked as a professor, director of the University Museum, and Dean. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1931. He retired in 1951,

The work of Ruthven on the familiar garter snakes, published in 1908, may regarded as founding an essentially new school of herpetology in the United States. This was a revision of a genus, carried out by the examination of large numbers of specimens, and evaluated largely in geographic terms. Ruthven attracted many students of reptiles to the University of Michigan, his most brilliant pupils being Frank N. Blanchard and Helen T. Gaige. Ruthven described and named 16 new species of reptiles, including three with Gaige.

Legacy Ruthven is commemorated in the scientific names of seven reptiles: Geophis ruthveni, Holbrookia maculata ruthveni, Lampropeltis ruthveni, Lepidoblepharis ruthveni, Macropholidus ruthveni, Masticophis schotti ruthveni, and Pituophis ruthveni.

He also mentored many young herpetologists, such as Laura Brodie.

Writings Miscellaneous Papers on the Zoology of Michigan, W.H. Crawford Co., 1916 A Naturalist in a University Museum, 1931 Laboratory Directions in Principles of Animal Biology, by Aaron Franklin Shull, George Roger Larue, Alexander Grant Ruthven, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, 1942 Naturalist in Two Worlds. Random Recollections of a University President, 1963 The Herpetology of Michigan Description of a New Salamander from Iowa Variations and Genetic Relationships of the Garter-Snakes The Amphibians and Reptiles of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Columbia, etc. With map