Edward H. Taylor (1889-1978) | University of Illinois Archives

Edward H. Taylor was a herpetologist at the University of Kansas where he collected thousands of specimens from the Philippines, Mexico, and the American southwest.

Edward Harrison Taylor was born on April 23, 1889, in Maysville Missouri. Taylor received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kansas at Lawrence. In between his studies, Taylor joined the U.S. Civil Service, setting up a school and teaching in the Philippines. Later, he was appointed Chief of the Fisheries of the Philippines. Taylor taught zoology at the University of Kansas. In 1932, Taylor and Hobart M. Smith (recent graduate in entomology and herpetology from Kansas State) travelled through Mexico, collecting around 5,500 herpetofauna specimens over 3.5 months. After Smith arrived at the U of I, about one-third of this collection was acquired by the University of Illinois Museum of Natural History.¹ Edward Taylor died on June 16, 1978.²

¹Taylor, Edward Harrison. (1975). Edward H. Taylor: recollections of an herpetologist. Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.4250, pp. 1-2, 5, 8-11, 69-70, 109, 128

²Webb, R. G. (1978). Edward Harrison Taylor 1889-1978. Herpetologica, 34(4), 422–425. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3891519, p. 422