Philip Hershkovitz (12 October 1909 – 15 February 1997) was an American mammalogist. Born in Pittsburgh, he attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Michigan and lived in South America collecting mammals. In 1947, he was appointed a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and he continued to work there until his death. He published much on the mammals of the Neotropics, particularly primates and rodents, and described almost 70 new species and subspecies of mammals. About a dozen species have been named after him.

Hershkovitz published extensively on the biology of each of the twelve orders of Neotropical mammals, focusing generally on taxonomy and biogeography. He wrote 164 papers, including both broad monographs and smaller contributions, and described 67 new species and subspecies and 13 new genera.^[3] He was an independent researcher, writing most of his contributions alone; only three he co-authored with other scientists. He participated in some fiery scientific debates, with views that according to Patterson's biographical note "brand him as something other than conciliatory or diplomatic".^[2] In 1968, he published his theory of metachromism, which attempts to explain variation in fur coloration among mammals through the loss of one of two classes of pigments in the hairs.^[2]

Hershkovitz may have been most well known for his studies of primates, to the extent that many thought him a primatologist, but he was quick to point out that, as Patterson phrases it, "nothing could be further from the truth".^[2] He had published on primates earlier, but did not give them special attention until the 1960s, when grant opportunities persuaded him to begin studying them, first Callitrichidae and later Cebidae.^[2] In 1977, he published a review of callitrichids that according to Ronald H. Pine was "the most heroically monumental revisionary monograph ever devoted to a Neotropical group"; it was to be the first volume of a comprehensive treatment of living New World monkeys.^[3] He continued with smaller-scale papers on cebids and assembled notes to continue his series on living New World monkeys, but eventually financial support ceased and Hershkovitz was relieved to be able to spend the last decade of his life studying the mammals that most "intrigued and animated" him—rodents and marsupials.^[3]

One of Hershkovitz's first papers was on rodents, describing two new Ecuadorean squirrels in 1938, and he continued to publish about the group, including reviews of Nectomys, Oecomys, Phyllotini, Holochilus, and scapteromyines between 1944 and 1966.^[2] He played an important role in formalizing and defining the tribal groups within the sigmodontine rodents of South America.^[7] However, his contributions at the time have been cited as examples of "vague notions of clade recognition",^[8] "phylogenetic transcendentalism" unsubstantiated by data, and "[misleading simplification] of a complex reality".^[9] He was engaged in discussions on the significance of penis morphology in sigmodontines and on their origin.^[2] Over eighty years old, he resumed studies of rodents in Brazil and discovered many additional new species.^[3] Shortly after his death, head of the FMNH's mammal division Lawrence Heaney said "The information he gathered was the basis for much of the conservation planning that's being done now in most of the major habitats in South America."^[10]

In 1966, he published a Catalog of Living Whales; he had originally intended to review the whales living off the South American coast, but expanded the project to all the world's species. This Catalog remains an invaluable resource for any student of cetaceans who needs to know the meaning of some obscure old name and has been called "a taxonomic Rosetta Stone". Although Hershkovitz was not a marine mammalogist, a brief obituary on him appeared in Marine Mammals Science in 1998.^[11] He treated many other mammals in his publications, including reviews of marsupials such as Gracilinanus, Philander, and Dromiciops, the tapirs of the Americas, some of the cottontail rabbits of South America, and also published extensively on nomenclature.^[2]

Hershkovitz was made a corresponding member of The Explorers Club in 1977. In 1988, he was the Honorary President of the XIIth Congress of the International Primatological Society. In 1991, the American Society of Primatologists named him a Distinguished Primatologist and the American Society of Mammalogists awarded him Honorary Membership.^[2]

Several animals have been named in honor of Hershkovitz:^[3]

• the bird Tinamus osgoodi hershkovitzi Blake, 1953
• the batfly genus Hershkovitzia Guimarães and D'Andretta, 1956
• the pocket mouse Heteromys anomalus hershkovitzi Hernandez-Camacho, 1956
• the Colombian weasel Mustela felipei Izor and de la Torre, 1978
• the night monkey Aotus hershkovitzi Ramírez-Cerqueira, 1983 (now a junior synonym for A. lemurinus)
• the field mouse Abrothrix hershkovitzi (Patterson et al., 1984)^[12]
• the fossil primate Mohanamico hershkovitzi Luchterhand et al., 1986^[13]
• the tick Saimirioptes hershkovitzi O'Connor, 1987
• the fossil swamp rat Scapteromys hershkovitzi Reig, 1994^[14]
• the chewing louse Eutrichophilus hershkovitzi Timm and Price, 1994
• the fossil rodent Bensonomys hershkovitzi Martin et al., 2002^[15]