Doris Mable Cochran

Doris Mable Cochran (May 18, 1898 - May 22, 1968) was an American herpetologist and custodian of the American Natural Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. for many years. Born in North Girard, Pennsylvania, she grew up in Washington after her father transferred there for a government job.

While an undergraduate student at George Washington University (A.B.1920, M.S. 1921), she worked for the War Department and became Aide in the Division of Herpetology at the United States National Museum. Although the museum was under the curatorship of Leonhard Hess Stejneger, Cochran was responsible for the administration of the herpetological collections. In 1927 she became Assistant Curator and in 1942, Associate Curator just prior to Stejneger's death. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland in 1933 with a thesis on blue crab myology. She became the first woman Curator in 1956 until her retirement in 1968 on her 70th birthday.

She studied art at the Corcoran Art School and developed her talents as an artist, becoming a scientific illustrator not only for her own works, but also for those of her colleagues.

Cochran's research was focused primarily on the herpetofauna of the West Indies and South America, particularly Brazil and Colombia. She published 90 taxonomic papers between 1922 and her death (four days after her retirement in 1968) in which she described 8 new genera and 125 species and subspecies as well as wartime booklets for the military identifying venomous reptiles. Her 20 years of studies of the West Indies culminated in The Herpetology of Hispaniola in 1941.

She went on to write mostly about South American frogs in Frogs of Southeastern Brazil in 1954 and Frogs of Colombia in 1970 (posthumously). Her most popular book was Living Amphibians of the World in 1961. Cochran personally collected over 3,000 frogs in an expedition to Brazil.

Cochran was the second person to be elected a distinguished fellow of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

Partial list of published works

• 1930 : Cold-blooded vertebrates (Smithsonian institution, New York)
• 1934 : Herpetological collections from the West Indies, made by Dr. Paul Bartsch under the Walter Rathbone Bacon scholarship, 1928-1930 (Smithsonian institution, New York).
• 1935 : The skeletal musculature of the blue crab, Callinectes sapidus Rathbun (Smithsonian institution, New York).
• 1941 : The Herpetology of Hispaniola (U.S. Govt. print. off., Washington).
• 1954 : Frogs of Southeastern Brazil (Smithsonian Institution, Washington).
• 1961 : Living Amphibians of the World (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.).
• 1961 : Type specimens of reptiles and amphibians in the U.S. National Museum (Washington).
• 1970 : Frogs of Colombia (Smithsonian Institution, Washington).
• 1970 : with Coleman J. Goin (1911-1986) The New Field Guide of Reptiles and Amphibians; more than 200 photographs and diagrams (Putman, New York).

References

• Adler, K. 1989. Herpetologists of the past, pp.5-141.Contributions to the History of Herpetology. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, vol5. Ithaca, New York

External links

Artists at Work: Creativity at the Smithsonian
Smithsonian Institution Archives: Record Unit 7151 Doris Mable Cochran Papers,circa 1891-1968
A Chronology of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists