Born and educated in New York City under private tutors, Gill early showed interest in natural history. He was associated with
J. Carson Brevoort in the arrangement of the latter's
entomological and ichthyological collections before going to
Washington, DC, in 1863 to work at the
Smithsonian Institution. He catalogued
mammals,
fishes, and
mollusks most particularly, although he maintained proficiency in other orders of animals. He was librarian at the Smithsonian and also senior assistant to the
Library of Congress. He was elected as a member of the
American Philosophical Society in 1867.[1]
^Oehser, Paul H. (1960). "The Cosmos Club of Washington: A Brief History". Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, DC. 60/62: 250–265.
JSTOR40067229.
Further reading
Abbott, R.T., and M.E. Young (eds.). 1973. American Malacologists: A national register of professional and amateur malacologists and private shell collectors and biographies of early American mollusk workers born between 1618 and 1900. American Malacologists, Falls Church, Virginia. Consolidated/Drake Press, Philadelphia. 494 pp.
Obituary in The Auk, October 1914, Number 4.
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887–1889
Jackson, J.R. & Quinn, A. (2023), "Post-Darwinian Fish Classifications: Theories and Methodologies of Günther, Cope, and Gill", History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Vol.45, No.4, (2023), pp. 1–37.
doi:
10.1007/s40656-022-00556-1
Gill, T.N. (1881), "Dr. Günthers Ichthyology", Science, Vol.2, No.54 (9 July 1881), pp. 323–327.
JSTOR2900596