Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Jr.

Harold Jefferson Coolidge Jr. (January 15, 1904 – February 15, 1985) was an American zoologist and a founding director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as well as of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Early life Coolidge was born in Boston, Massachusetts; his father Harold Jefferson Coolidge Sr. (1870–1934) was the brother of Archibald Cary Coolidge and Julian Coolidge. Coolidge was also a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson, through Jefferson's daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph. Coolidge studied at Milton Academy and at the University of Arizona before entering Harvard. Originally, he had wanted to become a diplomat, like his uncle Archibald Cary Coolidge, but he soon turned to biology, specializing in primatology. After getting a B.S. from Harvard in 1927, he worked as curator at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Career Coolidge participated in the Harvard Medical Expedition to Africa in 1926/27 to Liberia and the Belgian Congo, from where he brought back a large gorilla that is still on display at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1929 he published "A revision of the genus Gorilla", which forms the basis of the modern taxonomy of the genus Gorilla.