{{Short description|American comparative anatomist and museum curator}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}}
'''Delbert Dwight Davis''' (30 December 1908 – 6 February 1965), usually mentioned in literature as '''D. Dwight Davis''', was an American comparative anatomist and curator of zoology at the [[Field Museum of Natural History|Chicago Natural History Museum]].
Davis was born in [[Rockford, Illinois]] and was educated at [[North Central College]], Naperville. In 1930, he joined the Chicago Natural History Museum as an assistant in osteology under [[Wilfred Hudson Osgood|Wilfred Osgood]]. He became a curator of anatomy in 1941. He published on a range of zoological taxa from insects to mammals. He took a special interest in identifying the evolutionary relationships of the giant panda to other mammals using anatomical studies. He took over 25 years on the study and published a comprehensive book on the topic just a couple of months before his death. He visited Borneo in 1950 on a collection expedition and visited Malaya in 1962 where he worked for 9 months at the [[National University of Malaysia|University in Kuala Lumpur]].<ref name=obit>{{cite journal|author=Moore, Joseph Curtis| year=1965| title= D. Dwight Davis: 30 December 1908-6 February 1965| journal= Journal of Mammalogy|volume= 46| issue=2|pages= 371–372|doi=10.1093/jmammal/46.2.371 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Along with Rainer Zangerl, he was involved in translating [[Willi Hennig]]'s influential work on phylogenetics into English which was published in 1966.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bock|first=Walter J.|date=1968|editor-last=Hennig|editor-first=Willi|editor2-last=Davis|editor2-first=D. Dwight|editor3-last=Zangerl|editor3-first=Rainer|title=Phylogenetic Systematics, Cladistics and Evolution|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2406888|journal=Evolution|volume=22|issue=3|pages=646–648|doi=10.2307/2406888|jstor=2406888|issn=0014-3820|url-access=subscription}}</ref>
Davis married Charlotte and they had a son, Charles Darwin Davis.<ref name=obit />
== Works ==
* {{cite journal|author=Davis DD|year=1964|url=https://archive.org/details/giantpandamorpho03davi |title=The Giant Panda: A Morphological Study of Evolutionary Mechanisms|journal=Fieldiana: Zoology Memoirs| volume=3|pages=1–399}} * [[Karl Patterson Schmidt|Schmidt KP]], Davis DD (1941). ''Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada''. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 365 pp., 34 plates, 103 figures.
== References ==
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Delbert Dwight}} [[Category:20th-century American zoologists]] [[Category:North Central College alumni]] [[Category:Writers from Rockford, Illinois]] [[Category:1908 births]] [[Category:1965 deaths]]