Early life Dall was born in
Boston, Massachusetts. His father Charles Henry Appleton Dall, (1816–86), a
Unitarian minister, moved in 1855 to India as a missionary. His family however stayed in Massachusetts, where Dall's mother
Caroline Wells Healey was a teacher,
transcendentalist, reformer, and pioneer
feminist. In 1862, Dall's father, on one of his few brief visits home, brought his son in contact with some naturalists at
Harvard University, where he had studied, and in 1863, when Dall graduated from high school, he took a keen interest in mollusks. In 1863 he became a pupil of
Louis Agassiz of Harvard's
Museum of Comparative Zoology, in natural science. He encouraged Dall's interest in
malacology, a field still in its infancy. He also studied anatomy and medicine under
Jeffries Wyman.
First positions, first expeditions Dall took a job in Chicago. There he met the famous naturalist
Robert Kennicott (1835–1866) at the
Chicago Academy of Sciences Museum. In 1865 the
Western Union Telegraph Expedition was mounted to find a possible route for a
telegraph line between North America and Russia by way of the
Bering Sea. Kennicott was selected as the scientist for this expedition, and with the influence of
Spencer Fullerton Baird of the
Smithsonian Institution, he took Dall as his assistant, because of his expertise in invertebrates and fish. Aboard the
clipper Nightingale, under the command of the naturalist
Charles Melville Scammon, Dall explored the coast of
Siberia, with first several stops in Alaska (still Russian territory at that time).
Scammon Bay, Alaska was named after Charles Scammon. In 1866, Dall continued this expedition to Siberia. On a stop at
St. Michael, Alaska, he was informed that Kennicott had died of a heart attack on May 13, 1866, while prospecting a possible telegraph route along the
Yukon River. Set on finishing Kennicott's Yukon River work, Dall stayed on the Yukon during the winter. Because of cancellation of his own expedition, he had to continue this work at his own expense until autumn 1868. Meanwhile, in 1867, the U.S. had acquired Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. This was uncharted country, with a fauna and flora still waiting to be explored and described, a task Dall took upon himself as a surveyor-scientist. Back at the Smithsonian, he started cataloguing the thousands of specimens he had collected during this expedition. In 1870 he published his account of his pioneering travels in
Alaska and Its Resources, describing the Yukon River, the geography and resources of Alaska, and its inhabitants. Also in 1870, Dall was appointed Acting Assistant to the United States Coast Survey (renamed the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878). Dall went on several more reconnaissance and survey missions to Alaska between 1871 and 1874. His official mission was to survey the Alaska coast, but he took the opportunity to acquire specimens, which he collected in great numbers. In 1871–72, he surveyed the
Aleutian Islands. In 1874 aboard the
United States Coast Survey schooner
Yukon, he anchored in
Lituya Bay, which he compared to
Yosemite Valley in California, had it retained its glaciers. He sent his collection of mollusks,
echinoderms, and fossils to
Louis Agassiz at Harvard's
Museum of Comparative Zoology; plants went to
Asa Gray at Harvard; archaeological and ethnological material went to the Smithsonian. In 1877–1878 he was associated with the
Blake expeditions", along the
east coast of the United States. The major publications on the Blake Expeditions were published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard. Dall was in Europe in August 1878, sent to a meeting in
Dublin of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science. He took the opportunity to visit mollusk collections and meet European scholars.
1880 and after Dall married Annette Whitney in 1880. They travelled to Alaska on their honeymoon. After arriving in
Sitka, his wife went back home to Washington, D.C. He began his final survey season aboard the schooner
Yukon. He was accompanied, among others, by the
ichthyologist Tarleton Hoffman Bean (1846–1916). In 1882 Dall contributed for the
Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. In 1884, Dall left the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (known until 1878 as the U.S. Coast Survey), having already written over 400 papers. In 1885 he transferred to the newly created
United States Geological Survey, obtaining a position as
paleontologist. He was assigned to the U.S. National Museum as honorary curator of
invertebrate paleontology, studying recent and fossil mollusks. He would hold this position until his death. As part of his work for the U.S. Geological Survey, Dall made trips to study geology and fossils: in the Pacific Northwest (1890, 1892, 1895, 1897, 1901, and 1910), in
Florida (1891), and in
Georgia (1893). In 1899 he and an elite crew of scientists, such as the expert in
glaciology John Muir, were members of the
Harriman Alaska Expedition along the glacial
fjords of the Alaska coast and the Aleutian Islands and to the
Bering Strait aboard the
steamer . Many new
genera and
species were described. Dall was the undisputed expert on Alaska, and the scientists aboard were often surprised by his erudition, both in biology and in respect to the cultures of the
native Alaskan peoples. His contributions to the reports of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, include a chapter
Description and Exploration of Alaska, and Volume 13,
Land and Fresh-water Mollusks. He spent two months at the
Bishop Museum in
Honolulu,
Hawaii, examining its shell collection.
Societies and honors He was elected member of most of the U.S. scientific societies, vice-president of
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) (1882, 1885), a founder of the
National Geographic Society, and the
Philosophical Society of Washington. In 1897 he was elected to both the
National Academy of Sciences and the
American Philosophical Society. He was a Foreign Member of the
Geological Society of London. His eminence also earned him several honorary degrees.
Mount Dall, an peak in the
Alaska Range, now in
Denali National Park and Preserve, was named after Dall by A. H. Brooks of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1902. In 1912, he was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ==Publications==