Daniel Merriman papers

Daniel Merriman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1908, the son of Professor Roger Bigelow Merriman, a Professor of History at Harvard. He received his B.S. from the University of Washington, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He was employed variously by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, the Portland Trawling Company, and from 1930-1932 at WHOI, and was an Aquatic Biologist in charge of the striped bass investigation for the Connecticut State Board of Fish and Game from 1936-1938. Dr. Merriman began as an Instructor in Biology at Yale in 1938, became Assistant Professor in 1942 and Associate Professor in 1946. He served as Director of the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory at Yale from 1942-1966, from 1953-1956 he was Commissioner of the Connecticut State Board of Fisheries and Game, and from 1946-1966 he was Master of Davenport College at Yale. He also served as a Research Associate for the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Biology, American Museum of Natural History in New York from 1945 to 1962. He served as a Trustee of the Bermuda Biological Laboratory from 1944, was a member of the editorial board of Limnology and Oceanography since 1963 and of Fishes of the Western North Atlantic since 1961. In 1953 he headed an expedition to the South Pacific to study el Nino and it was one of the first expeditions to study the phenomenon while in progress. He was a prolific writer and throughout his career contributed numerous articles to scientific journals.

In 1980 on the occasion of the Institution's 50th Anniversary, he chaired the Third International Congress on the History of Oceanography held in Woods Hole. Together with Dr. Mary Sears, he edited an 812 page volume on oceanography containing sixty-nine papers on the history of oceanography from nineteen countries.

He served as a Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1944 to 1964. He was a member of the Nominating Committee from 1956-1957 and again in 1959. In 1957 he was a member of the Trustees ad hoc Committee to find a replacement for Columbus O'D. Iselin. From 1959-1963 he served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee and in 1974 he served as Chairman of the Biology Department Visiting Committee. In 1979 he was designated an Honorary Trustee and Honorary Member.

Daniel Merriman died on August 6, 1984, at his home in Bethany, Connecticut.

[Taken from Daniel Merriman's WHOI Obituary.]