David A. Egloff Papers

David Allen Egloff, biologist, teacher, and conservationist, was born in Mason City, Iowa, on April 13, 1935, to Margaret Carson Bruce (1906-1996) and William Chauncey Egloff (1901-1958). His father, a physician (University of Chicago–Rush Medical School MD 1927; residency and fellowship at Peter Bent Brigham and Harvard Medical School 1928-1932), practiced internal medicine with an emphasis on cardiology in Mason City from 1932 to 1958. David’s paternal grandfather, William Jacob Egloff (1863-1930) also was a physician and surgeon (Northwestern School MD 1887) who practiced in Mason City from 1887 to 1930. His paternal great grandparents, who were French and German Catholics, immigrated to Iowa in 1855-56 from Bavaria. David’s mother, the third of seven children of immigrants (1901-02) from Protestant Northern Ireland, was a medical secretary in Boston when she married William Egloff in 1932 and moved to Iowa. David grew up with one brother William Bruce Egloff (1937-1951); his half sister, Martha Emily Egloff (1924- ) and half brother Frank Rattray Lillie Egloff (1925- ) lived with their mother in Connecticut.

After attending Mason City public schools (1940-51) and the Mercersburg Academy (Pennsylvania) (1951-53), David attended Amherst College (BA 1957, Biology), Yale University (MS 1959, Zoology), and Stanford University (PhD 1966, Biological Sciences). At Yale David completed a Master’s thesis based on the analysis of cyclomorphosis in a field population of the cladoceran Daphnia catawba with John L. Brooks and G. Evelyn Hutchinson. At Stanford David completed his doctoral dissertation based on a field and experimental study of sex determination and sex ratios in the copepod Tigriopus californicus with Arthur C. Giese and Donald P. Abbott.

As a member of the Biology Department at Oberlin College from 1966 to 1999, Egloff taught courses in the areas of invertebrate biology and ecology at both introductory and advanced levels. He inaugurated at Oberlin the study of live marine invertebrates and the use of mathematical models for the analysis of populations and ecosystems. In support of the nascent environmental studies program from 1979 to 1992 he taught an interdisciplinary introductory environmental biology course and advanced seminars focused on multidisciplinary aspects of fisheries biology and environmental engineering.

Egloff initiated efforts beginning in 1969 that resulted in the formation of the Environmental Studies Program. He chaired the Environmental Studies Committee (ESC) at its formation by the College faculty in 1978 and also chaired its successor the Environmental Studies Program Committee (ESPC) from 1980-87, during which time the first faculty member in Environmental Studies (Joan Hartman) was recruited for 1982-83.

Egloff was elected to the College Educational Plans and Policy Committee (1983-87) and served as Chair of the Biology Department (1988-92). As chair of the City of Oberlin Open Space and Conservation Committee and College Ad Hoc Arboretum Committee in the 1970s he was instrumental in establishing policies and practices that enhanced the appearance of the town and college. Beginning in 1992 and continuing until two years after his retirement in 1999 he served as the Chief Health Professions Advisor for the College.

His scholarly research during his Oberlin career ranged from published studies of invertebrates, primarily zooplankton, in local streams, ponds, and Lake Erie. In the 1980s he began a series of experimental and field studies on marine rotifers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His contributions also included a chapter on ecosystem modeling of a freshwater lake in Systems Analysis and Simulation in Ecology (1975) and a review of marine cladocera that appeared in Advances in Marine Biology (1997).

In 1959 in Pelham, New York, David married Susan Darmstadt Tenney (Smith College BA 1956; Yale University, MS 1960 Biological Oceanography; Oberlin Conservatory of Music, 1984 Equivalency in music therapy). Their two children, Elizabeth Hammer Egloff (Amherst College, BA 1983) and Georg Brandl Egloff (Berklee School of Music, BM 1986) were born in Monterey County, California and as of 2004 were pursuing careers in California: Elizabeth in public health in Santa Rosa and Georg in music composition in West Hollywood.

Note written by David A. Egloff.