James Ellsworth De Kay

James Ellsworth De Kay (alternatively spelled DeKay or Dekay) (October 12, 1792 – November 21, 1851) was an American zoologist. Biography James De Kay was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1792. When he was two years old, his family moved to New York; both his parents died while he was still quite young. He attended Yale from 1807 to 1812, but was expelled before completing his degree when he threatened a college tutor with a club. Later, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, receiving his MD in 1819. After his return to the United States, he married Janet Eckford, a daughter of Henry Eckford, a ship builder. He then traveled with his father-in-law to Turkey as a ship's physician, and published a book, Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832, about these travels. Although well received as an entertaining travelogue, his book has been criticized as being very anti-Hellenic as well as sometimes naive about Turkish customs. He was entrusted by Eckford with negotiations with Brazil and other South American powers, relative to the ships of war that had been ordered by the latter. In 1830, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an honorary academician.