Gary N. (Gary Nathan) Calkins

Born in Valparaiso, Indiana, in 1869, Gary Nathan Calkins became one of the best-known American students of protozoa. He studied biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later earned his Ph.D. at Columbia, where he also built most of his academic career.

Calkins is remembered as a protozoologist and professor at Columbia University. He wrote several important textbooks on the biology of protozoa, helping to make a complex field more accessible to students and researchers.

His work also connected him with marine biology, and Smithsonian records describe him as an expert on marine protozoa. He died in 1943, leaving behind a body of work that reflects the excitement of early modern cell biology and zoology.