American mammalogist. Edward Alphonso Goldman was born in Mount Carroll, Illinois, in 1873. His family, settlers from Pennsylvania, gave up their holdings in the early 1880s and headed west to Nebraska and then further west to Tulare County, California, where they settled permanently in 1888. Goldman's interest in natural history stemmed from his father, who was an amateur naturalist, and while still living on the Nebraska ranch he collected birds and mammal specimens.

At the age of 17 he found a job as foreman in a fruit-packing plant near Fresno, California. He became a scientist literally by accident. In 1891 the Bureau of Biological Survey's expedition to Death Valley, California, dispersed in Visalia, north of the Goldman ranch in Alila. One of the personnel, the naturalist Edward William Nelson, received orders to continue southward through the San Joaquin Valley. On his way there, the crossbar of his horse-drawn carriage broke and Nelson stopped at the Goldman ranch to have it repaired. Nelson and Goldman's father soon discovered their shared interest in natural history and Nelson mentioned that he was looking for an assistant. As a result of this conversation Goldman, then 18, was hired to accompany Nelson on his journey. It was the beginning of a friendship and association that would last until Nelson's death in 1934. Their combined mammal collection came to total of 22,756 specimens. Later, on his own, Goldman added another 1,238; his last specimen, a pocket gopher from Florida, was collected in April 1946, less than five months before his death, at age 73. After their first field trip, Nelson received orders from C. Hart Merriam to travel to western Mexico on a three-month collecting assignment. This, their first stay in Mexico, stretched into four years, by which time Goldman was given an official appointment as a field agent for the Biological Survey.

All in all, Goldman spent 14 years working in Mexico and collected fauna in every state and territory. Other assignments took him to nearly all parts of the United States. During the construction of the Panama Canal, he produced a faunal survey of the Isthmus for the Smithsonian Institution, the results of which were published in 1920 under the title Mammals of Panama. During the First World War, he served as sanitary officer with the rank of Major in charge of rodent control work with the American Expeditionary Forces in France. He retained his commission as major in the Sanitary Reserve Corps of the Medical Department of the U.S. Army until 1937. At the Biological Survey's headquarters in Washington, DC, Goldman was in charge of the Division of Biological Investigations for six years, followed by three years in charge of the Big Game and Bird Reservations. In 1928, he was relieved of all his administrative duties in order to devote his time to scientific research and publication. By the end of his life, Goldman had described more than 300 taxa of mammals and produced 206 published articles. He continued to work after his retirement in 1944, as an associate in zoology at the Smithsonian Institution and a collaborator in the US Fish and Wildlife Service. All his spare time was devoted to work on his "Mammals of Mexico", which remained unfinished at his death.

In addition to Central and North American mammals, Goldman was known for his collection of birds and plants. More than 50 plants and animals are named after him, as is Goldman Peak in Baja California, where he and Nelson explored in 1905-1906. His expertise in ornithology was enlisted in 1936 to negotiate the technical aspects of a convention between the United States and Mexico for the protection of migratory birds and game mammals. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; president of the Biological Society of Washington and the American Society of Mammalogists; vice president of the Baird Club; and member of the Washington Academy of Sciences, the American Ornithologists's Union, the Cosmos Club, the Explorers Club of New York, Cooper Ornithological Club, and the Washington Biologists Field Club.

Sources:
S.P. Young, 1947, "Edward Alphonso Goldman: 1873-1946, Journal of Mammalogy, 28(2): 91-109.