Edward Sylvester Morse

Edward Sylvester Morse (1838–1925) was an American zoologist and a pioneer of Western knowledge of Japan. Largely self-taught, he studied under Louis Agassiz at Harvard and became an authority on brachiopods. In 1877 he went to Japan to collect specimens, was invited to teach zoology at the new University of Tokyo, and excavated the Omori shell mound, a founding site of Japanese archaeology. He fell in love with Japanese daily life and craftsmanship, wrote Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, and assembled great collections of Japanese pottery for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He directed the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem for decades.