Roger W. Barbour

Barbour was born in Morehead, Kentucky to John William and Laura (née Hall) Barbour and came from a farming family. He spent most of his youth exploring the nearby hills and forests of his hometown in northeastern Kentucky. At age fifteen, he enrolled at Morehead State Teachers College (now Morehead State University), where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1938. His mentor was zoology professor Wilfred A. Welter (1906–1939), who introduced him to the study of ornithology and herpetology; Barbour later named the salamander Desmognathus welteri in his honor in 1950. In December 1938, Barbour married Bernice Lewis, and the couple had one daughter and two sons. In 1939, he earned his Master of Science degree in ornithology at Cornell University under Arthur Augustus Allen. Soon after, he began doctoral studies under Albert H. Wright (1879–1970) at Cornell, which were interrupted by World War II.^[1][2][3]

While waiting for his military draft, Barbour taught at various colleges in Kentucky. From 1945 to 1946, he served in the United States Army, and upon returning to Cornell, he changed advisors to mammalogist William J. Hamilton, Jr. Barbour completed his Ph.D. in 1949 with a dissertation on the mammals, amphibians, and reptiles of Big Black Mountain in Harlan County, a coal region in southeastern Kentucky.^[1][2][3]

From 1949 to 1950, Barbour taught natural sciences in Wheeling, West Virginia, before joining the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He served there as an instructor until 1952, assistant professor until 1956, associate professor until 1968, and full professor until his retirement in 1984.^[1][2][3]

Although primarily a herpetologist and mammalogist, Barbour also wrote extensively on other wildlife topics. His non-herpetological books covered North American bats, Kentucky's shrubs and trees, wildflowers and ferns, mammals, birds, and darters (family Percidae). Between 1940 and 1994, he published more than 90 scholarly articles, 35 of which focused on amphibians and reptiles. His twelve books include Amphibians and Reptiles of Kentucky (1971), Turtles of the United States (1972, with Carl H. Ernst), Snakes of Eastern North America (1989, with Ernst), Turtles of the World (1989, with Ernst), and Turtles of the United States and Canada (1994, with Ernst and Jeffrey E. Lovich). Barbour was also an accomplished nature photographer whose color and black-and-white wildlife and plant photographs appear throughout his works.^[1][2][3]