Folders 7-14 Cowan, Richard Sumner, 1965-1969. Director of NMNH and head of the Smithsonian Office of Systematics. Includes documentation of various summer institutes in systematics, memoranda to professional research staff and department chairmen, and...
Container:
Box 26 of 35
Type:
Archival materials
Collection Restrictions:
Correspondence A-J in series 10 is missing.
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 328, National Museum of Natural History. Department of Paleobiology, Records
26 cu. ft. (11 record storage boxes) (30 document boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Manuscripts
Date:
1947-1975
Descriptive Entry:
These records include membership files, administrative files, reports, fiscal records, records related to the Journal of Systematic Zoology and copies of other SSZ
publications, records related to the annual meetings, the Pacific Section of SSZ records, files on scientific societies, and the records of the Summer Institute in Systematics.
Historical Note:
The Society of Systematic Zoology (SSZ) was organized at the Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1947. Prior to the
meeting, Waldo LaSalle Schmitt and George W. Wharton, Jr., had polled taxonomists about the founding of a systematics society; and the result was an organizational meeting
on December 29, 1949. The first annual meeting of the SSZ was held in Washington in September 1948. Schmitt became its first president and Wharton its first secretary-treasurer.
The government of the Society was vested in a council, with officers elected from nominees named by the Council. Original Council members were Orlando Park and Richard Eliot
Blackwelder. A president ad president-elect were elected to one-year terms.
A News Letter for the SSZ was first published in 1949 under the direction of Hobart Muir Smith, chairman of the Publications Committee. In 1952 the Journal of Systematic
Zoology was founded under the auspices of Richard Eliot Blackwelder. It gradually supplanted the News Letter which was discontinued in 1964. The quarterly Journal was considered
the most important project of the SSZ; it was devoted to theoretical and philosophical considerations in systematics rather than the naming of new taxa.
Other projects of the Society have included the continuing publication of "List of Books on Zoology," and a Directory of Zoological Taxonomists.
Attendances at various summer conferences from 1965 to 1967 gave rise to the idea of a Summer Institute in Systematics beginning in 1967. The SSZ, the American
Zoological Society, and the Smithsonian co-sponsored the Institute, the purpose of which was to enhance the quality and scope of courses in Systematics being taught at the
college and graduate level. The program was developed by members of the three organizations, and physical facilities were provided by the National Museum of Natural History.
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7226, Society of Systematic Zoology, Records
