William Culp Darrah (1909 – 1989) was an American professor of biology at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He also had an interest in, and published several works on, 19th-century photography.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, his was a specialist in paleobotany. Darrah was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well a member of Sigma Xi and the Botanical Society of America.^[1]

As an authority on the history of photography, he authored several books about 19th-century photo processes and photographers. As part of his interest in early photography, he assembled a collection of over 60,000 cartes-de-visite, which is now held at Penn State University.

He died in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Selected bibliography

Biology

• Principles of paleobotany (1960)
• Textbook of paleobotany (1939)
• A critical review of the upper Pennsylvanian floras of eastern United States with notes on the Mazon Creek flora of Illinois (1969)

Photography

• Stereo views, a history of stereographs in America and their collection (1964)
• A check list of Maine photographers who issued stereographs (1967)
• An Album of stereographs : or, Our country victorious and now a happy home : from the collections of William Culp Darrah and Richard Russack (1977)
• The world of stereographs (1977)
• Cartes de visite in nin[e]teenth century photography (1981)