Francis Bertody Sumner (August 1, 1874 – September 6, 1945) was an American ichthyologist, zoologist and writer.[1][2]
Sumner was born in Pomfret, Connecticut. He studied at the University of Minnesota and Columbia University where in 1901 he received a PhD with a thesis on fish embryology.[3] He became the Director of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries Laboratory at Woods Hole. He worked as a professor of biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.[3][4] Sumner was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1937 and the American Philosophical Society in 1938.[5][6]
Sumner collected many subspecies of Peromyscus in California. He also studied the pigments of fishes.[3]