Thank you, Alan, for this sad news.

Richard was a gentleman and a scholar; and a colorful one at that.  I had the pleasure of sharing cigars in his library and have not forgotten.  I will miss our conversations with Ken Boss in the old MCZ Mollusks Department.

He will be missed.

jay
Jay Cordeiro
Northeast Natural History & Supply
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________________________________
From: Conchologists List <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Alan Kabat <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 2:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [CONCH-L] Richard I. Johnson


[EXTERNAL SENDER]


I regret to inform you that Richard Irwin Johnson passed away on July 1st, at the age of 95.  He died peacefully at home.

Richard was a long time Research Associate at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, having started as a volunteer while still in high school, and his first scientific article was published in 1941, at the age of 16.  After service in the U.S. Army in World War II, he returned to Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College (1951), and developed an extensive publication record with an emphasis on molluscs, particularly the freshwater bivalves of the family Unionidae.  He also authored a number of biographies and catalogues of numerous other scholars who collected and studied molluscs, and those publications remain invaluable references for current and future generations of malacologists.  These included articles on Unionidae specialists (Call, Frierson, Heude, Lea, Marshall, Simpson, Utterback, and the Wrights), as well as those whose molluscan studies included other taxa (e.g., Bequaert, Brooks, Bush, Clench, Couthouy, Fuller, Gould, Mighels, Ortmann, Pease, Prime, Storer, Turner, Verrill, and Wetherby).

Richard also prepared invaluable collations of a number of nineteenth-century publications that appeared in multiple parts over many years.  He authored type catalogues of the Unionidae holdings of several museums, including the MCZ and NHMUK, and wrote histories of several now defunct museums, including the Boston Society of Natural History, the Portland (Maine) Society of Natural History, and the Lyceum of Natural History of New York.

Richard also built, over a period of nearly six decades, what is perhaps the largest private library of books and journals on molluscs, including antiquarian titles seldom found in research libraries.

Richard was probably the oldest and longest-serving member of the American Malacological Society, having joined the predecessor entity, the American Malacological Union, in 1941.

Having known Richard for over 35 years, I have long appreciated both his extensive knowledge of the literature on molluscs and his great interest in a wide range of other topics, which resulted in many stimulating late-night conversations!

Alan R. Kabat



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