Turner, Charles Henry (3 Feb. 1867-14 Feb. 1923), biologist and educator, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Thomas Turner, a church custodian, and Adeline Campbell, a nurse. Although neither parent had attended college, Thomas Turner would eventually earn a reputation as "a well-read man, a keen thinker, and a master of debate [who] surrounded himself with several hundred choice books." Both parents, but especially the father, imparted a love of learning to young Charles. After graduating valedictorian of his high school class in Cincinnati, he proceeded to the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a B.S. in 1891 and an M.S. in 1892. His goal was to teach science and ultimately to head a technological or agricultural school for African Americans. As an undergraduate he came under the influence of Clarence Luther Herrick, a professor of biology at Cincinnati and pioneer in the field of psychobiology. When Herrick established the Journal of Comparative Neurology in 1891, Turner became a regular contributor; he published eight research articles and at least six abstracts in the journal between 1891 and 1901. Text and illustrations from his undergraduate thesis, "Morphology of the Avian Brain," appeared in the inaugural volume.

Turner's first teaching appointments were at the Governor Street School in Evansville, Indiana (1888-1889), and for a brief period subsequently (1889) as a substitute in the Cincinnati public schools. In 1891 he was appointed to an assistantship in the biological laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, a position he held for two years. Anxious, as he put it, to "get to work among my own people," he wrote to Booker T. Washington in April 1893 requesting notification of any openings at black colleges. Later that year he became professor of biology and head of the department of science and agriculture at the all-black Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia. His tenure at Clark (1893-1905) was followed by posts at other black schools: principal of College Hill High School, Cleveland, Tennessee (1906); professor of biology and chemistry at Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, Augusta, Georgia (1907-1908); and instructor in biology at Sumner High School, St. Louis, Missouri (1908-1923). Sumner, founded in 1875, was highly regarded for the caliber of its faculty, which at one time had included Edward A. Bouchet, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. (in physics from Yale, 1876).

In 1907 Turner earned his Ph.D. in zoology (magna cum laude) at the University of Chicago. At Chicago he worked under the eminent zoologists Charles Otis Whitman, Charles Manning Child, and Frank Rattray Lillie. He was one of the earliest black Americans to earn a doctorate in the biological sciences (Alfred O. Coffin had earned one at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1889). Turner's doctoral thesis, a study of the "homing" mechanism in ants, marked a watershed in his scientific research. Earlier, his work had followed classic morphological lines--that is, examination of an organism's form and structure by means of microscopic observation in the laboratory. Following his time at Chicago, his work became more behavioral, focusing on animals in the field, in their natural habitat. His goal was to continue developing insights into elusive problems of neurology and comparative psychology--problems first introduced to him by Herrick at Cincinnati.

While teaching in St. Louis, Turner established himself as an authority on insect behavior. He was the first to fully describe a unique movement--a pattern of gyration--that certain species of ant go through when returning to their nests. This movement came to be widely known, in the scientific literature, as "Turner's circling." Turner also showed that ant movement is influenced by landmarks and light, that bees respond to color and pattern as well as odor, that wasps and burrowing bees may memorize landmarks adjacent to their nests, that ant lions lie motionless for prolonged periods out of an involuntary response to external stimuli ("terror paralysis") rather than as a self-concealment or camouflage reflex, that certain insects can hear and distinguish pitch, and that cockroaches learn by trial and error (but forget quickly). The innovative experimental techniques and ingenious devices that Turner developed to carry out his work were admired and often emulated by other scientists. His reputation for accuracy and thoroughness resulted in several invitations to contribute annual literature reviews on insect behavior, vertebrate and invertebrate behavior, tropisms, and other topics to Psychological Bulletin and Journal of Animal Behavior. In all, he published over fifty scientific articles (with at least three others appearing posthumously). His work appeared in major journals, such as Science, American Naturalist, and Biological Bulletin.

Turner's research was carried out with his own resources and in his spare time. The focus of his professional life was teaching. At Sumner he inspired in his students a curiosity about the natural world that outlasted their high-school years. Also active in black civic organizations, Turner served as a director of the Colored Branch, St. Louis YMCA. He wrote occasional papers on

racial issues for the Southwestern Christian Advocate and other publications. One article, "Will the Education of the Negro Solve the Race Problem?" (1902), supported W. E. B. Du Bois's contention (in opposition to Booker T. Washington) that college or university education--not industrial training--was the best way to stimulate prosperity for blacks and to promote interracial harmony. Drawing on his work as a biologist, Turner compared human and animal "societies." He theorized, for example, that "animals are prejudiced against animals unlike themselves, and the more unlike they are the greater the prejudice," but that with humans "dissimilarity of minds is a more potent factor in causing prejudice than unlikeness of physiognomy." He advanced this theory in support of his argument for equal educational opportunity, irrespective of race.

Turner was a member of the Entomological Society of America, the Academy of Science of Illinois, and the Academy of Science of St. Louis. He held elective office in the latter organization, serving terms as secretary of the entomology section and as council member. He was twice married, first (in 1888) to Leontine Troy of Cincinnati (she died in 1894) and later to Lillian Porter of Augusta, Georgia. Following his death in Chicago, a school for the physically handicapped--the Charles H. Turner School in St. Louis--was built in his memory.

Bibliography

A few Turner letters survive in the Herrick papers (part of the Neurology Collections), Department of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Turner's seminal work, "The Homing of Ants: An Experimental Study of Ant Behavior," is in Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 17 (Sept. 1907): 367-434. His longest work, coauthored with C. L. Herrick, is Synopsis of the Entomostraca of Minnesota; With Descriptions of Related Species Comparing All Known Forms from the United States, Included in the Orders Copepoda, Cladocera, Ostrocada (1895). For Turner's interest in racial and social issues, see especially "Will the Education of the Negro Solve the Race Problem?" in Twentieth Century Negro Literature; or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro by One Hundred of America's Greatest Negroes, ed. D. W. Culp (1902), pp. 162-66. Useful summaries of Turner's life and career include D. E. Haines, "The Contributors to Volume 1 (1891) of The Journal of Comparative Neurology: C. L. Herrick, C. H. Turner, H. R. Pemberton, B. G. Wilder, F. W. Langdon, C. J. Herrick, C. von Kupffer, O. S. Strong, T. B. Stowell," Journal of Comparative Neurology 314 (1991): 9-23, and Robert C. Hayden, "Charles Henry Turner," in Hayden's Seven Black American Scientists (1970), pp. 68-91. See also Transactions of the Academy of Sciences of St. Louis 24 (Dec. 1923), a special memorial issue in Turner's honor.

Kenneth R. Manning

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