Elon E. Byrd 1934-1972
In 1934, Elon E. Byrd joined UGA faculty. His four decades of research made him an authority on helminth parasites and filarial worms. In an examination of the helminth collection that he left behind at UGA upon his retirement in 1972, 35 type-specimens in which Byrd is the taxonomic authority were found. In 1990, these specimens were deposited by Annie Prestwood in the U.S. National Museum Helminthological Collection. It is fitting that Prestwood would catalog his collection, as they were collaborators on a couple of papers on blood flukes and liver flukes in 1968.
In 1941, he was elected an AAAS Fellow, before enlisting in the U.S Navy to serve in the Filaria Control Unit in the South Pacific during WWII in 1943. Upon his discharge from the Navy in 1946, he resumed his position at the University of Georgia.
Like his colleague Boyd, Byrd was a strong promoter of science education and research, particularly in the south. He gave a Presidential Address before the Association of Southeastern Biologists on April 20, 1951, in Tuscaloosa, AL and a paper based on that address appeared in The Georgia Review in 1953, entitled “Educating American Men of Science”.
In 1956, he gave a talk at the 17th annual meeting of the Association of Southeastern Biologists on “Parasitology on a New Blood Fluke from the Chestnut-sided Warbler” (The Red and Black, 4/19/1956 p8) In 1969, he co-founded the Southeastern Society of Parasitologists.
He died suddenly of a heart attack in March 1972, thus ending his nearly 4 decades of service to UGA and field of parasitology.
His shoes would be hard to fill, and a few people had opinions of who should fill the vacancy left by Byrd. Frank Hayes, the founder of SCWDS, recommended filariae researcher Lawrence R. Ash. However, Paul Thompson championed Raymond Damian who worked on schistosomes. Damian will ultimately accept the position.