James Graham Cooper

James Graham Cooper lived from 1830 to 1902 and was an American surgeon and naturalist, born in New York and the son of the naturalist William Cooper. He took his medical degree in 1851 and practiced in New York City until 1853, when he joined a Pacific railroad survey party in Washington Territory as a surgeon with help from Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian. Later he worked for the California Geological Survey from 1860 to 1874 under Josiah Dwight Whitney and became active in the California Academy of Sciences, eventually serving as director of its museum. Though primarily a zoologist who collected many birds and made significant botanical collections, he continued to practice medicine to earn a living, and with Baird he wrote the land birds volume of a book on the ornithology of California in 1870. He eventually settled in Hayward, California, in 1875.