James Graham Cooper, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

James Graham Cooper

American surgeon and naturalist

Date of Birth: 19-Jun-1830

Place of Birth: New York City, New York, United States

Date of Death: 19-Jul-1902

Profession: zoologist, surgeon, botanist, malacologist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Gemini


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About James Graham Cooper

  • James Graham Cooper (June 19, 1830 – July 19, 1902) was an American surgeon and naturalist.Cooper was born in New York.
  • He worked for the California Geological Survey (1860–1874) with Josiah Dwight Whitney, William Henry Brewer and Henry Nicholas Bolander.
  • He was primarily a zoologist, but he also made significant botanical collections from San Diego to Fort Mohave, Arizona in 1861.
  • Cooper was active in the California Academy of Sciences, eventually becoming Director of the Museum.He obtained his medical degree in 1851 and practiced in New York City until 1853.
  • Spencer F.
  • Baird, the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at that time, helped Cooper work with the Pacific railroad survey parties working in the Washington Territory.
  • He joined this survey under Captain George McClellan as a surgeon until 1854.
  • In 1855 he visited San Francisco and the Panama Isthmus.
  • He collected many birds during this expedition.In 1860, he returned west and joined the Blake Expedition that went from St.
  • Louis up to the Missouri River and into Idaho and Washington.
  • He worked as a contract surgeon for brief periods with the US Army and Josiah Whitney, the chief of the California Geological Survey.
  • Along with Baird he wrote a book on the birds of California "Ornithology, Volume I, Land Birds" in 1870.His marriage in 1866 made it difficult for him to balance his interest in natural history.
  • He worked in San Mateo, Oakland, San Francisco and finally settled in 1875 in Hayward.
  • He wrote on his difficulties in a letter in 1870 In this country, like most others, the pursuit of science as a private business is a losing game ...
  • Almost all the 'enlightened' people of this city know me as a 'naturalist,' which is the title of all the taxidermists also, and ...
  • they avoid employing me professionally as they would a bird-stuffer.
  • The consequence is that ...
  • my patients are among the poor and ignorant, who don't know much about me and don't pay either ...
  • My time is much taken up now in running about trying to raise money enough to pay expenses ...
  • As I am not worse off than most other naturalists, I ought not to complain, I suppose, ...
  • Hoping you may not get down to my condition (the best of wishes), I remain, ... His father William Cooper was also a naturalist.

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