John Nathan Cobb

John Nathan Cobb (February 20, 1868 – January 13, 1930) was an American author, naturalist, conservationist, canneryman, and educator. He attained a high position in academia without the benefit of a college education. In a career that began as a printer's aide for a newspaper, he worked as a stenographer and clerk, a newspaper reporter, a field agent for the U.S. Fish Commission (USFC) and its successor the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, as an editor for a commercial fishing trade magazine of the Pacific Northwest, and as a supervisor for companies in the commercial fishing industry. He took photographs during his extensive travels documenting scenes and people. In 1919, Cobb was appointed the founding director of the College of Fisheries at the University of Washington (UW), the first such college established in the United States.