Remembrances and Reflections: Early Days of the Society of Systematic Zoology

The Society of Systematic Zoology (SSZ), the direct ancestor (cladists, please pardon the term) of the Society of Systematic Biologists, had an unusual birth. It was and is the sister group to the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) established in 1946. At the rst annual meeting of SSE in Boston, the planning for the mission of the Society and its journal Evolution made it clear that the emphasis would be on the process of evolution to the exclusion of considerations of pattern or products. Although several systematists at this meeting objected, Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson adamantly opposed inclusion of systematics in the purview of SSE. Ironically, both men would later serve as Presidents of SSZ, Simpson in 1963 and Mayr in 1966. Waldo Schmitt (a carcinologist) of the U.S. National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History) and George Wharton (an acarologist), then at the University of Maryland, decided after this rebuff to establish a separate society thatwould include all zoologists carrying out “taxonomic” studies. Technically, SSZ was organized in late 1947 and at its rst meeting in Washington, D.C., in 1948 Schmitt was elected President and Wharton SecretaryTreasurer. My own association with SSZ dates from 1950. At that time I was nishing my senior year at Stanford University and looking forward to continuing graduate school there. I had been fortunate as a freshman to be “adopted”by thegraduate studentsworking for GeorgeMyers in the StanfordNatural History Museum, where my interests in systematic herpetology were encouraged. This was an exciting time! Most of the graduate students (andmany ofmy fellow underclassmen) were veterans of World War II. Most were very serious about taking advantage of their educational opportunities and brought an exceptional level of maturity and experience to any intellectual discussion. As students of systematics, we were especially inspired by Mayr’s Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942), and Stebbins’ Variation and Evolution in Plants (1950) for illustrating the ways that our studies could contribute to understanding the origin and maintenance of biological diversity. It was only natural that we joined SSZ, and most became members of SSE as well. We were probably much inuenced in these decisions by our Professors, Gordon Ferris, an early Council Member of SSZ, and Myers, who published an article on The Nature of Systematic Biology in an early issue of the society’s new journal Systematic Zoology (1:106–111; 1952). In its initial phase, the Council of the Society envisaged an ambitious program that included a journal, a textbook, a newsletter, faunal handbooks, and several service functions. Not all of these came to pass but over the next few years several of these initiatives were brought to fruition. In this formativeperiod, Richard E. Blackwelder, a coleopterist at the U.S. National Museum and later Professor of Zoology at Southern Illinois University, an ofcer of the Society for 15 years and President in 1961, was the mainstay of SSZ. Blackwelder always gave great credit to Waldo Schmitt for many of the innovations undertaken by the Society. However, there can be no question that Dick Blackwelder was the epoxy that held everything together. He was the rst editor of the Newsletter and the rst editor and designer of the cover of Systematic Zoology, which made its inaugural appearance in 1952. He was SecretaryTreasurer (1948–1959), prepared The Directory of Zoological Taxonomists of the World (with R.M. Blackwelder), and prepared nine editions of Books on Zoology (1952–1976) for SSZ. He founded and manned the Book Lounge, where all zoologists at American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)meetings could review recently published zoology books. He solicited the books