User:Doug Weller/Worth Hamilton Weller

Worth Hamilton Weller was an American herpetologist, born May 28, 1913 in Cincinnati and died on June 22, 1931 in a fall from a cliff at Grandfather Mountainnear Linville North Carolina.

His interest in herpetology and in particular salamanders developed when he was a young boy. Soon he was recording observations for the Ohio Natural History Museum,. Shortly after Ralph E Dury (1899-?), the director of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, establsished the Cincinnati Junior Society of Natural Sciences he joined it and at 16 he was its business manager and Curator of Herpetology. He carried out an extensive correspondence with the herpetologist Emmett Reid Dunn which led to his acceptance at Haverford College. Between 1930 and 1932 he published 12 papers, most of which were reprinted in 1965 (Adler:182).

In April 1930 he visited Cascade Caverns in Kentucky with Dury where he collected the type speciment of a salamander he described and named after Dury, Gyrinophilus porphyriticus duryi (Weller, 1930). During the summer vacation between his sophomore and junior years at Walnut Hills High School he visited Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina with Dury, where he discovered the first specimens of Weller's Salamander (Plethodon welleri). The same year he described a new salamander from Kentucky, Gyrinophilus porphyriticus duryi (Weller, 1930), which he named after Dury. Only a week after graduating with high honors from high school Dury took members of the Junior Society to Grandfather mountain to find more speciments for Weller. The afternoon they arrived Weller left the others to go collecting despite the bad weather and never returned. Four days later his body was found wedged between boulders in a creek below the mountain. With him was a collecting bag contained speciments of his new species (Adler:182).

Publications

 * Walker, Charles F. and Weller, W. Hamilton, "The Identity and Status of Pseudotriton duryi" Copeia, Vol. 1932, No. 2, (Jul. 1, 1932), pp. 81-83 Published by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
 * Weller, W. H. 1930 "Notes on amphibians collected in Carter Co., Kentucky." Proc. Junior Soc. of Nat. Sci., Cincinnati, 1, Nos. 5 and 6: 6-9 (counted).
 * Weller, W. H. 1930 "On a recent occurrence of the blue-tailed skink in Hamilton County (Ohio)", Proc. Jun. Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 1, nos. 5 and 6.
 * Weller, W. H. 1930 "Notes on Aneides aeneus (Cope and Packard)."  Proc. Jun. Soc. Nat. Sci. (Cincinnati) 1:2.
 * Weller, W. H. 1930 "A preliminary list of the salamanders of the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee." ibid