Waldo L. Schmitt

Background He was married to Alvina Stumm. 1927 Schmitt was aboard Fleurus at Deception Island 1933–1935, to the Galápagos Islands sponsored by G. Allan Hancock of Los Angeles, California. 1937, a guest of Huntington Hartford, he explored and collected in the West Indies on the Smithsonian-Hartford West Indies Expedition. 1938, accompanied President Franklin D. Roosevelt as naturalist on the Presidential Cruise to Clipperton Island, Cocos, and the Galapagos Islands. 1939, member of the Hancock South America Expedition and 1940 Biologist in charge of field operations on the first United States Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska king crab investigation. 1941–1942, on special detail with the United States Navy investigating the possibility of establishing a biological station in the Galapagos Islands. 1943, visited South America, under the auspices of the State Department, for the purpose of strengthening relations between United States and Latin American scientists. 1955, headed the Smithsonian–Bredin Belgian Congo Expedition. 1956–1960 led Bredin-sponsored expeditions to the Caribbean (1956, 1958, 1959), the Society Islands (1957), and the Yucatan (1960). 1961–1962 Sponsored by a grant from the Office of Naval Research, Schmitt spent the summers with Harry Pederson photographing the coral reef fauna of the Bahamas Islands. 1962–1963, his last expedition - member of the Survey of the United States Antarctic Research Program, the Staten Island cruise to Marguerite Bay and Weddell Sea.

Participation in Scientific Societies Lobster lunch aboard the research vessel Mureva, with dancers from Bora Bora. Photo from Schmitt's Smithsonian-Bredin Expedition, 1956.He was the president of the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1947 and a founding member of the Society of Systematic Zoology, serving as president in 1948. He was a trustee of the Bear's Bluff Laboratories, International Oceanographic Foundation, and the Serological Museum of Rutgers University.

Legacy Camp SchmittSeveral locations, as well as the clam genus Waldo, are named after him. Waldo's Wilds, a park in Takoma Park is one such place; on this property was Schmitt's house, which he donated to the City of Takoma Park. Because they did not have sufficient money to maintain it, they gave it to the county. The house was demolished about 1990. The land had plants and shrubs which he had collected from around the world, as well as one of the largest trees in the county on it. It is located at .

Camp Waldo Schmitt, located in Augusta, West Virginia , is named in honor of Schmitt and his son, Waldo Earnest Schmitt. Furthermore, a seminar room in the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) as well as Schmitt Mesa in Antarctica bear his name.