Nantucket has always been a pretty good place to find sea shells; up to 1945 professional scientists had counted 46 different species of Mollusca on the island and in its waters. That was about the time Dwight Taylor of Pasadena, now a bright-eyed, serious 17-year-old, began his collection. Dwight kept picking up sea shells until he had picked up 120 species of them, and enough mollusk lore to write a dozen-page scientific treatise: "A Malacological Survey of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts."
Last week, largely because of his treatise, Dwight Taylor was in Washington, D.C.—one...