Donald Leslie Frizzell was an American paleontologist, geologist and malacologist. He is honored in the bivalve name Pitar frizzelli Hertlein & Strong, 1948.
Early life and education
Don L. Frizzell was born on 19 October 1906 in Bellingham, Washington. He attended grade school in White Bird, Idaho. In 1926, Frizzell entered the University of Washington in Seattle where he received master’s degree in zoology under the direction of Professor Kincaid. During 1930-1931, he published three papers in Nautilus and one more paper on the new molluscan species. In summer 1931, Frizzell worked as a junior paleontologist with the Northwest Experiment Station, U.S. Bureau of Mines in Seattle. In autumn 1931, Frizzell started a five-year doctorate in paleontology at Stanford University. Pursuing graduate school, he received several fellowships such as Jacob Fellow in 1931-1932, Scholar in 1933-1934, and Jordan Fellow in 1934.
Career
After graduating from Stanford in 1936, Frizzell started working for Shell Oil Company as a micropaleontologist. However, he did not consider this job very promising and left it a year later. In 1937, he joined the International Petroleum Corporation spending next 7 years working in the oil field of Peru and Ecuador. On 29 August 1938, Frizzell married an American arachnologistHarriet Exline Lloyd in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In 1939, Frizzell was in M. Smith’s 2nd International Directory of Malacologists in Negritos, Peru, and in 1943, M. Smith’s International Directory of Malacologists in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In January 1945, Frizzell accepted an offer to work as an associate professor in geology department at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1946-1948, he spent summers working as a geologist for the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin. In 1948, Frizzell moved to Rolla and started working in the Department of Geology at the University of Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. At the University of Missouri Frizzell taught micropaleontology, paleontology, petroleum geology, and later also stratigraphic paleontology. Having completed work on Foraminitera Frizzell opened new avenues of study in the area of holothurian sclerities. Monograph of fossil holothurian sclerites, written jointly with his wife Harriet Exline, was published in 1955. In 1959, Frizzell was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for a two-year study of “Recent otoliths and the Eocene-Oligocene otoliths of the Gulf Coast”. Frizzell kept teaching activities until September of 1972. He died at Jefferson City, Missouri, in Still Hospital on 17 October 1972. Frizzell is honored in the bivalve name Pitar frizzelli Hertlein & Strong, 1948.
