Wade Fox was born on June 2, 1920, in
Hilton, Virginia. He graduated from the
University of North Carolina in 1943 and then earned a Master's (1946) and doctoral degree at the
University of California, Berkeley, working as Curatorial Assistant of in the
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology from 1943 to 1949, and earning a PhD under
Robert C. Stebbins in 1950. His dissertation topic was "Biology of the Garter Snakes of the San Francisco Bay Region". Later he became president of Herpetologists' League and an editor of the journal
Copeia. He named several
garter snake (
Thamnophis) subspecies, including
Thamnophis elegans terrestris,
Thamnophis elegans aquaticus (now a synonym of
T. atratus atratus) and
Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi. He is commemorated in the name of the
Fox's mountain meadow snake (
Adelophis foxi ). Wade Fox died of a heart attack following heart surgery on September 20, 1964. ==Partial bibliography==