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| Declan Murphy |
During his childhood it appears that he was easily distracted and insatiably curious, he was expelled from every school he attended up to the age of 16. After being expelled from the Bridgton Academy in 1854 (for carving on the desks), he obtained a job (via the assistance of his older brother) as a draftsman for a company that manufactured steam engines. The work developed his talent for making detailed and accurate drawings - a skill that would assist him later in his career.
In 1856 he enrolled in the small Bethel Academy in Maine and became interested in studying nature, graduating in 1859. His professors, particularly Dr. Nathaniel True, encouraged his interests and permitted him to assist visiting scholars in their studies and fieldwork. Only a few months later, he was credited with the discovery of a new species of minute land snail - proclaimed Tympanis morsei by the Boston Society of Natural History in 1859.
Morse went on to study conchology at Harvard, leaving as part of the protest against Louis Agassiz. In 1867 helped to found the Peabody Academy of Science. He then taught anatomy at Bowdoin College, Maine before traveling to Japan at his own expense to study Pacific Ocean brachiopods. He was the discoverer of the Omori Shell Mounds, an important archeological find close to Tokyo, and established a marine biology lab in Kanagawa prefecture.
Morse joined the faculty of newly established Tokyo University, and helped to introduce modern scientific methods and thinking to the study of zoology, biology, sociology and archaeology. Due to his on-going excavation of the Omori Shell mounds, he became one of the most important members of the Japanese archaeology community. He is also credited with having championed Charles Darwin's theories of evolution to the intellectuals of Japan. He played an important role in the organization of the Japanese Imperial Museum, and advised the government on the appointments of oyatoi gaikokujin.
Morse was in Japan for many years in Japan and Asia and in addition to teaching and research, he also studied Japanese and Chinese art and culture. He became an authority on a wide range of things Japanese. He kept detailed journals, and always described what he saw in great detail. Towards the end of his long career, the Japanese government awarded him the (Second Degree) Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Order of the Rising Sun.
Edward Morse was also a noted collector of Chinese and Japanese crafts, artifacts and in particular, ceramics. His ceramics collection is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (the Morse Collection - at one time he served as the Museum's curator of Japanese ceramics). He published several books and played a key role in defining and explaining Japanese art and culture to western audiences (particularly in North America) in the late 19th/early 20th century.
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