Gerard Dikmans

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Citation

Unknown. 1938. “Gerard Dikmans.” Special Collections, USDA National Agricultural Library. Accessed December 15, 2024, https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/speccoll/items/show/8267.

Biography

Gerard Dikmans was born in the Netherlands in 1885 and came to the United States in 1905. He attended Washington College, Tennessee (B.A., 1914); the University of Tennessee (B.S.A., 1917); Michigan State College (D.V.M., 1920); the University of Minnesota (M.S., 1927); and Georgetown University (Ph.D., 1931).

Dikmans intended to become a bacteriologist and pathologist, but parasitologists W.H. Dalrymple and Brayton H. Ransom persuaded him to conduct parasitological work for the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station in 1920. Once introduced to the field of parasitology, Dikmans’ interests led him to research helminth (worm) parasites of cattle, sheep, goats, and deer, as well as anaplasmosis and bovine trichomoniasis. Over a 36-year period, he authored or coauthored 144 papers on parasitological subjects.

Recognized by his contemporaries as one of the preeminent veterinary parasitologists in the United States, Dikmans spent most of his career with USDA. His various assignments took him to the USDA’s Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station from 1924 to 1926, and Bureau of Animal Industry’s Zoological Division in Jeanerette, Louisiana from 1926 to 1929. From 1929 until his retirement in 1953 he was headquartered at Beltsville, Maryland.

He passed away in 1975.


Source:

Proceedings of the Helminthological Society of Washington 35, no. 1 (January 1968): 115-16.