Father John Augustine Zahm, CSC (June 11, 1851 – November 10, 1921) was a Holy Cross priest, author, scientist, and South American explorer. He was born at New Lexington, Ohio and died in Munich, Germany.
Zahm was educated at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and upon graduation entered the Congregation of Holy Cross, and was ordained priest in 1875. He filled various positions in the Congregation, at one time being provincial from 1898 to 1906. He was the author (sometimes under the pseudonym of Mozans), of a number of books covering a large variety of subjects; among these were: Evolution and Dogma, Scientific Theory and Catholic Doctrine, Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena, Along the Andes and down the Amazon, The Quest of El Dorado. He was an enthusiastic Dante student and assembled at Notre Dame one of the three largest of the Dante libraries in America. He was a scholarly and brilliant writer.
Zahm befriended 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, who also loved and read Dante in Italian. It was Father Zahm who talked President Roosevelt into participating in what came to be known as the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition to South America and which would also include Theodore's son, Kermit, and Colonel Da Silva Candido Rondon, to go up the Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt, now the Roosevelt River). This trip deteriorated into a near disaster and it caused one man to drown, another to be murdered and almost killed Roosevelt, shortening his life by probably ten years from the combined effects of malaria and infection, and almost cost the others their lives as well, as the members lost boats to waterfalls and rapids and almost ran out of food. They barely made it to the first sign of civilization and some certainty that they would survive. The elder Roosevelt had to be carried off his canoe, so weak and ravaged by sickeness had he become.
Zahm unwisely delegated planning and provisioning of the trip, and so irritated Roosevelt and Rondon that he was not permitted to go on the expedition itself, but took a side trip instead. Throughout his life he collected maps, photographs, relics, and curios which were added to the valuable collection of fifteen hundred volumes of South American history and research work at Notre Dame.
In 1896, he published a book entitled Evolution and Dogma, arguing that Church teaching, the Bible, and evolution did not conflict. Within two years, it was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and Zahm was forced to recant its publication. It was this crisis at the University of Notre Dame occasioned the Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of the heresy of americanism.
He planned a book on historical and archaeological study of the Holy Land, but died of bronchial pneumonia in a Munich hospital on route to the Middle East.
Zahm is presently survived in South Bend by a Saint Mary's College student, Alexandra Zahm.
Zahm House, a male dormitory at Notre Dame, is dedicated in his honor. Ironically, the residents of Zahm House have historically been associated with causing mischief.