VAN GELDER, Richard G.

Richard Van Gelder (1928-1994)

VAN GELDER, Richard G. (1928-1994) was an American mammalogist who served as the Curator of Mammalogy for the American Museum of Natural History in New York for more than twenty-five years. He joined the museum in 1958, becoming one of the museum's youngest curators. He became chairman of the department in 1959.

Van Gelder is responsible for the Blue Whale that hangs in the Hall of Ocean Life after its redesign in 1969.

In 1957, while on the Puritan Expedition to the Baja Peninsula, he discovered a new species of vesper bat commonly known as Van Gelder's Bat.

Van Gelder died in 1994 of acute monocytic leukemia. He was 65 years old.

• 1958. Emerson, William K. Results of the Puritan-American Museum of Natural History Expedition to Western Mexico American Museum Novitiates No. 1894, July 22, 1958.

Puritan left Newport, CA on a collecting expedition for the American Museum of Natural History March 5-June 6, 1957.

Crew aboard were:

Captain Henry Angelsen;

Fred Schmidt, engineer;

Charles Frisk, first mate;

Sverre Johannessen, Clyde Kettering, Donald Travis, and Collins Christie.

Scientists aboard were:

Harry J. Bauer, sponsor;

William K. Emerson, malacologist and leader;

Richard G. Van Gelder, mammalogist;

Richard G. Zweifel, herpetologist;

and Donald F. Squires, invertebrate paleontologist, all of the AMNH.

John D. Soule, invertebrate zoologist, Allan Hancock Foundation, University of Southern California;

Oakes A. Plimpton, scientific assistant, New York City.