Barbour, the eldest of four brothers, was born in 1884 to
Colonel William Barbour, and his wife, Julia Adelaide Sprague. Colonel Barbour was founder and president of The Linen Thread Company, Inc., a successful thread manufacturing enterprise having much business in the
United States,
Ireland, and
Scotland. Although born on
Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts, where the family was spending the summer, Barbour grew up in
Monmouth,
New Jersey, where one of his younger brothers,
William Warren Barbour, entered the political arena, eventually serving as
U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1931 to 1937 and again from 1938 to 1943. At age fifteen, Thomas Barbour was taken to visit
Harvard University, which, entranced by its
Museum of Comparative Zoology, he later attended. At Harvard, he studied under
Alexander Agassiz, son of
Louis Agassiz. Having received his
B.A.,
M.A., and
Ph.D. from that university, Barbour joined the faculty in 1911 when his doctoral dissertation was published, and he took on the position of
curator of
reptiles and
amphibians at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Eventually he became the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and, in 1927, director of the museum. Although primarily interested in reptiles and amphibians, he also studied
birds and
insects, particularly
butterflies. His biological interests, however, were remarkably diversified, and he is considered to be one of the last of a dying breed: a general
naturalist. His scientific travels took him through
Africa,
Asia,
North America,
South America, and
Central America, among other regions. He particularly enjoyed
Panama,
Costa Rica, and
Cuba, which he visited at length on at least thirty occasions beginning in 1908, generally staying in Soledad at the Harvard Botanical Gardens, now known as the
Jardin Botanico de Cienfuegos. Barbour served as custodian of these gardens from 1927 until his death in 1946. In his book,
Naturalist in Cuba, Barbour writes, "I suspect that I am the only living American naturalist who has visited all parts of the island again and again, for I am not only a Cuban by adoption, but a devoted friend of the land and its people." In addition to the expected scientific discussion of the island's
flora and
fauna, Barbour provides a description of Cuban society and culture. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1916. In 1923 and 1924, he was one of the scientists and financial benefactors who founded the
Barro Colorado Island Laboratory in
Panama, location of the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The island, originally a hilltop, sits in the middle of
Gatun Lake, which was created when the
Chagres River was dammed during the
Panama Canal building project. Along with better than 400 scholarly articles, Barbour wrote several books including the autobiographical
Naturalist at Large (1943),
Naturalist in Cuba (1945), ''A Naturalist's Scrapbook
(1946), and That Vanishing Eden'' (1944), which explores the natural world of a remote, undeveloped
Florida. In 1906, Barbour married Rosamond Pierce of
Brookline, Massachusetts. Dr.
Glover Morrill Allen and his student Ralph Nicholson Ellis, medical officer Dr. Ira M. Dixon, and
William E. Schevill (a graduate-student in his twenties and Associate Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology). Barbour said at the time "We shall hope for specimens' of the kangaroo, the wombat, the Tasmanian devil and Tasmanian wolf," and the mission was a success with over 300 mammal and thousands of insect specimens returning to the United States. He was a trustee of the
Carnegie Institution from 1934 until he died in 1946. During the last two years of his life he was in failing health, following a blood clot that had developed while he was in Miami. He was at the Museum of Comparative Zoology as usual on January 4, 1946, and in happy mood at home in Boston that evening. But he was stricken later in the night with
cerebral hemorrhage, and died on January 8, without regaining consciousness. ==Legacy==