Charles Marcus Breder Jr., was a self-taught aquarist, who later became a visiting professor but never attended a university. He described his first of many new fish species, a now threatened armored catfish from Panama (with no iNat observations) in July 1925.
But I want to celebrate his authorship, 100 years ago to this month (September 1926), of what I think was a quite astonishing 138 page monogram. Simply entitled, “The locomotion of fishes”, it was published in Zoologica by the New York Zoological Society. He noted quite brazenly that up to that point, much of the relevant literature, “has been in the nature of abstract philosophical discussion and that relatively so little has been based upon actual experiment and study of living fishes.” He set out, “therefore, to amplify our existing incomplete knowledge of the subject as much as possible at this time; to refute that which is untrue in its literature, and finally to unify and systematize the whole.” Aside from overstating the impact of water jets from the gills, he not only achieved his whole aim, but effectively launched a giant section of future animal behaviour studies. His legacy continues to this day with inumerable references to this work; a pre-requisite for almost any and every publication discussing fish locomotion. Indeed his gait classification system remains the foundation which is still being built upon to this day.
Have you come across CM Breder, or is there another, perhaps little known, yet accessible biology publication, which you think did something like Breder for their field, or inspired you?