Herbert CopelandBorn 21 May 1902; died 15 Oct 1968 at age 66.Herbert Faulkner Copeland was an American biologist who delineated four biological kingdoms, instead of just two for plants and animals. A decade after Darwin's Origin of Species, Ernst Haekel had proposed (1866) adding a kingdom, Protista, for microorganisms, but it wasn't accepted. Copeland further discriminated among the microorganisms in a paper in 1938, splitting them into two kingdoms: Monera and Protista. Copeland identified Monera as organisms without nuclei, and Protista as being largely unicellular, with nuclei. By 1956, he published a book,The Classification of Lower Organisms, still trying “to pursuade the community of biologists” to adopt these four kingdoms. Change came slowly, and continues beyond Copeland's ideas to now five or six. He was the son of botanist Edwin B. Copeland, from whom he learned the principles of classification.« |
