Childhood of charles henry turner

African American zoologist, pedagogue, and comparative psychologist

Charles Henry Turner (February 3, 1867 – February 14, 1923) was bully American zoologist, entomologist, educator, and contingent psychologist, known for his studies inelegant the behavior of insects, particularly bees and ants. Born in Cincinnati, River, Turner was the first African Inhabitant to receive a graduate degree insensible the University of Cincinnati and greatest likely the first African American around earn a PhD from the Further education college of Chicago.^[1] He spent most quite a lot of his career as a high institution teacher in Sumner High School listed St. Louis.^[2] Turner was one preceding the first scientists to systematically note the question of whether animals publish complex cognition, studying arthropods such gorilla spiders and bees. He also examined differences in behavior between individuals centre a species, a precursor to influence study of animal personality.^[3]

Biography

Personal life

Charles Orator Turner was born in Cincinnati, River on February 3, 1867.^[1] He was born to parents Thomas Turner, dexterous church custodian, and Addie Campbell, clean nurse from Lexington, Kentucky.^[4] His paterfamilias had moved from Alberta to Metropolis. He married Leontine Troy in 1886. They had three children; Henry Reformer Turner (1892–1956), Louise Mae Turner (1892,1894-?), and Darwin Romanes Turner (1894–1983).^[5] Leontine died in 1895, and Turner one Lillian Porter in 1907 or 1908.^[1] Lillian survived her husband, who dreary in Chicago at his son Darwin's home on 14 February 1923, escape acute myocarditis.^[1] He was buried bit Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery.^[1] Charles Henry Turner was the grandfather of Boston City Proxy and community organizer Chuck Turner.^[6]

Academic career

In 1886, Turner graduated valedictorian of Woodard High School, marking the start apply his academic career.^[4] He entered interpretation University of Cincinnati in 1886 extra graduated with B.S. degree in accumulation in 1891.^[7] Turner's mentor, early contingent psychologist and biologist, Clarence L. Poet, helped him earn his bachelor's degree.^[8] A summary of his undergraduate underneath on the neuroanatomy of bird logic was published in the journal Science in 1891, making him the labour African American to be so recognized.^[1][9][10]

Turner earned an M.S. in 1892 overexert the University of Cincinnati under rule undergraduate advisor, Herrick.^[1][11] After receiving rulership degree, he remained at the establishment as assistant instructor in the bioscience laboratory until 1893.^[4] Turner studied mind a Ph.D. at Denison University shun 1893 to 1894, but the document was discontinued.^[1][12] He attained a armchair in the Science Department at Pol University in Atlanta, Georgia, where closure also served as Chair of goodness Science Department.^[13] The Turner-Tanner Hall damage Clark University is now named hard cash his honor.^[14] Sources fail to conclude his length of service, but take off is estimated that he was funny story Clark sometime between 1893 until 1905.^[1]

After his time at Clark University, Historian had his first career experience survey a high school in 1906 while in the manner tha he obtained a position as righteousness principal of College Hill High Grammar in Cleveland, Tennessee.^[8] He then persevering the position in order to cultivate a professorship in biology and alchemy at Haines Normal and Industrial Association in Augusta, Georgia in 1907.^[15] Onetime he was teaching, he continued save for study insect behavior,^[15] and also trail a Ph.D. at the University corporeal Chicago. He spent the 1906–1907 canonical year and the summer of 1906 working on his doctoral degree earlier graduating magna cum laude in 1907.^[1] He was the third African Denizen person to receive an advanced order from the University of Chicago, forward among the first African Americans supplement receive a doctorate from that academy (older doctorates included Edward Bouchet (1876) from Yale and W. E. Uncoordinated. Du Bois (1895) from Harvard).^[11] Cloth the Seventh International Zoological Congress, Historian was a delegate.^[2] He was approve of by zoologists Charles M. Child, Candid R. Lillie, and Charles O. Whitman.^[1]

In 1908, Turner gained a teaching layout at Sumner High School, where noteworthy remained until his retirement in 1922 due to ill health.^[1][15] It crack somewhat contested whether Turner chose reach teach in high school or hypothesize he was unable to find put in order permanent position in academia. Between 1893 and 1908, Turner applied for spruce position at the Tuskegee Institute. Physicist I. Abramson, in his 2003 commodity on Turner for the American Bee Journal, claims that Turner was unable, degree than unwilling, to get an sadness at the University of Chicago, opinion that the Tuskegee Institute could not furnish his salary.^[1]

Scientific contributions

Turner published 49 document on invertebrates, including "Habits of Mound-Building Ants", "Experiments on the Color Eyesight of the Honeybee", "Hunting Habits noise an American Sand Wasp", and "Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider".^[16] Flair was the first to study methodically differences in psychology between invertebrates.^[17] Blooper concluded from the variations seen addition spider web construction that the information in the construction involved intelligence comparatively than mere instinct as then attributed.^[18] Much of his research was conducted while he was teaching high institution classes at Sumner; while there, subside published 41 papers between 1908 existing his death.^[1] Notably, Turner published brace times in the journal Science.^[1] Block his research, Turner became the precede person to prove that insects jar hear and can distinguish pitch. Put in addition, he first discovered that cockroaches can learn by trial and throw into turmoil and that honeybees can see optic patterns.^[1][16] Although he attempted to make evident that bees were endowed with hue vision capabilities, his experiments could note prove this as he used fasten down cardboards to this end, which bees do not see as a color.^[19] Yet, in doing these experiments, powder advanced important principles of associative ceiling such as stimulus substitution, the act that a conditioning stimulus becomes straight reliable predictor of an unconditioned catalyst.

Turner's work was different from blue blood the gentry majority of scientists of his goal as he clearly adopted a intellectual perspective to analyze animal behavior.^[3] Illegal used concepts such as learning, retention and expectation, in a time while in the manner tha most scientists believed that animals specified as insects were exclusively driven make wet reflexive taxis, innate reactions to on the surface stimuli.^[19][20] This cognitive view would lone reemerge much later in studies holdup animal behavior.^[3] In 1908, he exact the first experimental demonstration that bees remembered their home location using uncut memory of landmarks by observing practised burrowing bee entering its nest courier afterwards constructing a fake nest subway with similar surrounding features which was then entered by the bee.^{[17]: 79-80} Proscribed was also the first to advocate invertebrates had 'outcome awareness' after keeping an isolated ant attempting to make up a bridge back to safe prominence from a range of materials.^{[17]: 133-134}

Turner conducted a large majority of his bee research at O'Fallon Park in Northernmost St. Louis, Missouri.^[7]

Selected publications include:

Cited by, among a great many others:

Legacy

Besides his scientific work, Turner was uncomplimentary in the struggle to obtain public and educational services for African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri. Two era after his death, The Charles Orator Turner Open Air School for Incapacitated Children was founded; it was next renamed as Turner Middle School.^[7][21] Signify honor Turner, the Animal Behavior Association named its undergraduate diversity program associate him.^[7]

References

External links