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Annie Montague Alexander
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Annie Montague Alexander (1867-1950) was an American philanthropist and paleontological collector. She is best known as the benefactress of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), and the financier of university museum collections as well as a series of important paleontological expeditions to the western United States at the turn of the 20th century. She took part in many of these expeditions, gathering a significant collection of fossils and exotic game animals in her own right.
She was the granddaughter of New England missionaries in Hawaii.
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Encyclopedia
Annie Montague Alexander (1867-1950) was an American philanthropist and paleontological collector. She is best known as the benefactress of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), and the financier of university museum collections as well as a series of important paleontological expeditions to the western United States at the turn of the 20th century. She took part in many of these expeditions, gathering a significant collection of fossils and exotic game animals in her own right.
She was the granddaughter of New England missionaries in Hawaii. Her father had successfully introduced sugar cane to Maui. Alexander first became fascinated with paleontology in 1901 while attending a lecture by Professor John C. Merriam at the University of California, Berkeley. She offered to underwrite the entire cost of his upcoming expeditions. She took part in Merriam's 1901 expedition to Fossil Lake in Oregon, and his 1902 and 1903 expeditions to Mount Shasta in northern California. In 1905 she financed and took part in the Saurian Expedition to the West Humboldt Range in Nevada. The expedition discovered many of the finest specimens of ichthyosaur in existence. From 1908 she collaborated continuously in the field with her companion Louise Kellogg.
In 1907, after returning from a hunting trip to Alaska, she proposed the establishment of a Natural History Museum at the University of California, offering to support its research and collections. In 1908 she helped finance the newly established Museum of Vertebrate Zoology after the state fell short in its appropriations. In 1920 when Prof. Merriam left the University to become president of the Carnegie Institution, the paleontology department was merged with the geology department, displeasing both Merriam and Alexander. She subsequently helped establish the UCMP and created an endowment for its funding. She also helped finance much of the work of William Diller Matthew and his protegé George Gaylord Simpson.
Alexander shared her life with Kellogg for forty-two years. By all accounts, it was a devoted "Boston marriage". Among other activities, the two of them ran a working farm together; their asparagus was sold nationwide. Alexander continued to finance expeditions and perform field work throughout her life, celebrating her 80th birthday while in the field.
At least seventeen species of plants and animals honor Alexander in their scientific names, and several others are named after Kellogg.
Further reading
- Stein, B. R. 2001. On Her Own Terms, Annie Montague Alexander and the Rise of Science in the American West. University of California Press, Berkeley.
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