author
Charles Haskins Townsend
1859–1944
A pioneering American zoologist and naturalist, he helped shape the New York Aquarium and wrote widely about marine life, exploration, and the living world he loved to study.
1 Audiobook
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series
by Mary Antin, Elizabeth Ashe, Kathleen Carman, Cornelia A. P. (Cornelia Atwood Pratt) Comer, Mazo De la Roche, Annie Hamilton Donnell, James Edmund Dunning, Rebecca Hooper Eastman, William Addleman Ganoe, Lucy Huffaker, Joseph Husband, S. H. Kemper, Christina Krysto, Ellen Mackubin, Edith Ronald Mirrielees, Margaret Prescott Montague, Edward Morlae, Meredith Nicholson, Kathleen Thompson Norris, Laura Spencer Portor, Lucy Pratt, Elsie Singmaster, Charles Haskins Townsend, Edith Wyatt
About the author
Born in Pennsylvania in 1859, Charles Haskins Townsend became an American zoologist and naturalist whose career centered on the study of fish and marine animals. He worked with the United States Fish Commission before taking on the role for which he is best remembered: director of the New York Aquarium, a position he held from 1902 to 1937.
Townsend was known not only as a scientist and administrator, but also as a writer who shared his fascination with sea life with general readers. His work reflected a lifelong interest in exploration, fisheries, and the natural world, and he remained closely associated with public education about animals through the aquarium.
He died in 1944, leaving behind a body of scientific and popular writing and a long connection to one of New York’s best-known institutions for the study and display of aquatic life.