1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gould, Augustus Addison

GOULD, AUGUSTUS ADDISON (1805–1866), American conchologist, was born at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on the 23rd of April 1805, graduated at Harvard College in 1825, and took his degree of doctor of medicine in 1830. Thrown from boyhood on his own exertions, it was only by industry, perseverance and self-denial that he obtained the means to pursue his studies. Establishing himself in Boston, he devoted himself to the practice of medicine, and finally rose to high professional rank and social position. He became president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and was employed in editing the vital statistics of the state. As a conchologist his reputation is world-wide, and he was one of the pioneers of the science in America. His writings fill many pages of the publications of the Boston Society of Natural History (see vol. xi. p. 197 for a list) and other periodicals. He published with L. Agassiz the Principles of Zoology (2nd ed. 1851); he edited the Terrestrial and Air-breathing Mollusks (1851–1855) of Amos Binney (1803–1847); he translated Lamarck’s Genera of Shells. The two most important monuments to his scientific work, however, are Mollusca and Shells (vol. xii., 1852) of the United States exploring expedition (1838–1842) under Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1833), published by the government, and the Report on the Invertebrata published by order of the legislature of Massachusetts in 1841. A second edition of the latter work was authorized in 1865, and published in 1870 after the author’s death, which took place at Boston on the 15th of September 1866. Gould was a corresponding member of all the prominent American scientific societies, and of many of those of Europe, including the London Royal Society.