George Brown Goode

George Brown Goode (February 13, 1851 – September 6, 1896), was an American ichthyologist and museum administrator.

Early life and family George Brown Goode was born February 13, 1851, in New Albany, Indiana, to Francis Collier Goode and Sarah Woodruff Crane Goode. He spent his childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio and Amenia, New York. He married Sarah Ford Judd on November 29, 1877. She was the daughter of Orange Judd, a prominent agricultural writer. Together, they had four children: Margaret Judd, Kenneth Mackarness, Francis Collier, and Philip Burwell. He graduated from Wesleyan University and studied at Harvard University.

In addition to his scientific publications, Goode wrote Virginia Cousins: A Study of the Ancestry and Posterity of John Goode of Whitbywhere he traced his ancestry back to John Goode, a 17th-century colonist from Whitby.

Goode was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He received from the Queen Regent of Spain the decoration of Commander in the Order of Isabella the Catholic. He also was awarded the degree of Ph.D. from Indiana University and that of LL.D. from Wesleyan University. In 1893, he served as president of the Philosophical Society of Washington. He died at Lanier Heights in Washington, D.C., on September 6, 1896, at the age of only 45, after a bout with pneumonia. He had been at work on a history of the Smithsonian's first fifty years, which were being celebrated in 1896. The then head of the Smithsonian, Samuel Pierpont Langley, completed the volume and wrote a memorial to Goode, published in 1901. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Eponymy The genus Goodea of splitfins was named in his honour by David Starr Jordan in 1880; this in turn gave his name to the family Goodeidae.

Species named after him include: Bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei Southern eagle ray, Myliobatis goodei Goode croaker, Paralonchurus goodei Goode's desert horned lizard, Phrynosoma goodei Quillfish, Ptilichthys goodei Chilipepper, Sebastes goodei Palometa, Trachinotus goodei