Background
Frederick Baker was a physician and malacologist in San Diego, California. Born on January 29, 1854 in Norwalk, Ohio and educated
at Cornell University (1870) and the University of Michigan (M.D., 1880), he married Charlotte LeBreton Johnson in 1881. They
moved to San Diego in 1888 and set up medical practices, both working at St. Joseph's Hospital (he in general practice, she
in obstetrics-gynecology). Baker served on the San Diego City Council and the board of trustees of the State Normal School
(later San Diego State University). He participated in the Stanford Brazil Expedition of 1911, discovering 35 new species
of mollusk. He was among the founding members of the Zoological Society of San Diego and of the Marine Biological Association
(later the Scripps Institution of Oceanography), and he served as President of the San Diego Society of Natural History. Baker
was a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and a member of the American Malacological Society. He donated part of
his extensive shell collection to the San Diego Natural History Museum; other institutions receiving shells from his collection
include the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. He died
on May 16, 1938 in San Diego.