Henry Bryant Bigelow

Henry Bryant Bigelow was an American oceanographer and marine biologist who helped found the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts in 1930 and served as its first director. Bigelow spent 62 years associated with Harvard University, joining its faculty in 1906, and over his career he formally described about 110 species of marine organisms that remain recognized today, with 26 species and two genera later named in his honor. Bigelow's detailed oceanographic and biological surveys of the Gulf of Maine culminated in Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, first published in 1953 with co-author William C. Schroeder, a reference work that remained in active use by fisheries scientists and fishermen for decades afterward. Bigelow received the Alexander Agassiz Medal in 1931, the William Bowie Medal in 1944 and the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 1948 in recognition of his contributions to oceanography, and the NOAA research vessel Henry B. Bigelow was later named in his honor.