Schmidt, Karl Patterson

Karl Patterson Schmidt was an American herpetologist. From 1916 to 1922, he worked as scientific assistant in herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, under the American herpetologists Mary Cynthia Dickerson and Gladwyn K Noble. He made his first collecting expedition to Puerto Rico in 1919, then became the assistant curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in 1922. From 1923 to 1934, he made several collecting expeditions for that museum to Central and South America, which took him to Honduras, Brazil and Guatemala. In 1937, he became the editor of the herpetology and ichthyology journal Copeia, a post he occupied until 1949. He became the chief curator of zoology at the Field Museum in 1941, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. From 1942 to 1946, he was the president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. In 1953, he made his last expedition, which was to Israel