Oral History Interview with Paul Louis Illg, Former Curator of Invertebrate Biology National Museum of Natural History, 1947-1952
Abstract
Paul Louis Illg (1914-1998) received his B.A. in 1936 and M.A. in 1941
from the University of California at Berkeley. He began his Ph.D. program
at Berkeley but his studies were interrupted by World War II. After
completing his wartime service, Illg was appointed Associate Curator of
Invertebrate Zoology in the National Museum of Natural History from
1947 to 1952, while completing his Ph.D. at The George Washington
University in 1952. Illg spent the remainder of his career at the University
of Washington teaching zoology, as Assistant Professor in 1952, then
Associate Professor, and Professor from 1969 to 1982. He specialized in
the systematics of Crustacea, conducting fieldwork from the Friday
Harbor Laboratories. Illg published prodigiously for more than fifty years
on parasitic copepods, particularly those living in ascidians. His research
on microscopic ascidicolous copepods greatly extended biological and
taxonomic knowledge, and illuminated evolutionary processes in these
extremely complex parasitic crustaceans.