Joel Asaph Allen was born on July 19, 1838, in Springfield, and went on to become an American naturalist whose professional life encompassed zoology, ornithology, and mammalogy. He received his education at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a foundation that prepared him for a career spanning field collection, exploration, and institutional science. His work as a scientific collector and explorer brought him into contact with a wide range of animal and plant life, and he also engaged in botanical collection alongside his primary focus on fauna.

Allen's activities as a naturalist extended from direct fieldwork to the formulation of principles with lasting explanatory reach. The principle associated with his name — Allen's rule — holds that the bodies of endotherms vary in shape according to climate, with greater surface area in hot regions to facilitate heat loss and reduced surface area in cold ones to conserve it. This joining of morphology to environmental condition gave the study of animal distribution a more precise analytical framework. Among his recorded publications, The Auk, Volume XIII stands as a notable work produced during his career.

His institutional roles placed him at the center of American natural history. He served as the first curator of birds and mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and subsequently became the first head of that institution's Department of Ornithology. Beyond his curatorial work, he held the position of first president of the American Ornithologists' Union, a role that marked his standing among those working in the same discipline. These positions, taken together, reflect the breadth of his engagement with the organizational as well as the scientific dimensions of natural history.

Joel Asaph Allen died on August 29, 1921, in New York City, the place that had housed his most sustained institutional work, including his roles at the American Museum of Natural History and his leadership of the American Ornithologists' Union. His career as a zoologist, ornithologist, mammalogist, and curator extended across several decades and left a record documented in his publications and in the positions he held as the first to occupy each of them.