Harold Jefferson Coolidge Jr. (January 15, 1904[1] – February 15, 1985[2]) was an American zoologist and a founding director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as well as of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Coolidge participated in the Harvard Medical Expedition to Africa in 1926/27 to Liberia and the Belgian Congo, from where he brought back a large gorilla[5] that is still on display at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Ernst Schwarz had already published in 1929 a brief paper on them and had classified them as the subspecies Pan satyrus paniscus, based on a skull from the Belgian Congo discovered at a museum at Tervuren, Belgium.
[9][10] During World War II, Coolidge served in the OSS,[2] where he developed, amongst other things, a chemical shark repellent,[1] overseeing Julia Child, who worked as his executive assistant on the project.
He was also a member of the U.S. delegation at the conference in Fontainebleau in France where the International Union for Conservation of Nature was founded, and was elected its first vice-president.