Frederick W. True, American zoologist, studied at the
University of the City of New York and was awarded the degree Bachelor of
Science (BS) in 1878. In November that year he was appointed as a clerk to the
United States Fish Commission and two years later was the custodian of the Fish
Commission's exhibits at the Berlin Fisheries Exhibition in Germany. In July
1881 he joined the staff of the United States National Museum, later part of
the Smithsonian Institution, where he remained for the rest of his career. He
was head curator of the Department of Biology from 1897 to 1911 and then became
assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Though an introverted
person, he was an excellent administrator.
True's scientific work mainly focused on marine
mammals of the Order Cetaceae, including wales, dolphins and porpoises. He
built up an extensive collection of marine mammals for the National Museum,
wrote A review of the family Delhinidae
(1889), Whalebone wales of the western
North Atlantic (1904) and Observations
of living wales (1911), as well as many scientific papers, and became the
foremost living authority on the Cetaceae. Later in his career he also studied
fossil cetaceans. True's Beaked Wale, True's vole and True's shrew mole were
named after him, both in their official species names and in the vernacular.
True's contribution to South African science consisted of a
paper "On Tursiops catalania and
other existing species of Bottlenose Porpoises of that genus" in the Annals of the Durban Museum (1914, Vol.
1, pp. 10-24).
