Description
The A. M. Strong Notebooks consist of four volumes of listings of Mollusca taxa, including keys, distributional lists and
species lists.
Background
Archibald McClure Strong was an American malacologist specializing in Pacific Coast marine mollusks. Born in Westminster,
California, on June 18, 1876, Strong attended public schools in Pasadena; he received his A. B. degree in chemistry from Stanford
University in 1899 and worked as a mining and civil engineer, first with various mining companies and later as county surveyor
and city engineer in Bishop, Inyo county; he moved to Los Angeles in 1911 and maintained a general practice as a mining and
civil engineer. He married Mary Watterson in 1906. He joined the Conchological Club of Southern California in 1920. He actively
collected in the 1920s in central and southern California, between 1922 and 1929, sometimes with conchologists Emery P. and
Elsie M. Chase. He classified shells that had been collected by others on many expeditions including the California Academy
of Sciences expedition to the Gulf of California in 1921, to Guadalupe Island, the Revillagigedos and Tres Marias in 1925;
the Allan Hancock Expedition to the Galapagos Islands, 1931-1932; the Templeton Crocker Expedition of the CAS in 1932 off
the west coast of Central America to Acapulco, Mexico, and the Galapagos Islands and the 1941 "Askoy" Expedition. His collaborators
included Fred Baker, Ulysses S. Grant IV, G. Dallas Hanna, Leo George Hertlein, and Herbert N. Lowe. He was a member of the
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Malacological Union, the California Academy of Science,
and the San Diego Society of Natural History. Strong died at Balboa, California on July 14, 1951. A large part of his mollusk
collection is held by the San Diego Natural History Museum.