I mean, I continued my herpetological involvement by being the editor of Copeia, the main journal in the herpetological field, the main professional journal. And I got into that because of my friend Bob Inger at the Field Museum. He was editor of Copeia and he took off for the… Read More
George, what type of relationships were you able to develop in the research field when you were at the zoo, both nationally and internationally?… Read More
In terms of where I thought it might be, the program that I might foster might go clearly, I saw more than one challenge in terms of the future. And For instance, one of the things I appreciated early on is that there wasn’t a formal education program at Brookfield. Read More
And it happened that with our, so to speak, accidental discovery of the complex mating ritual of the Surinam toad, that I got into studying the behavior of those creatures, the reproductive behavior. But at the same time, because of the interest of people at the University of Chicago, I… Read More
Did you have a thought process of where you wanted to take this?… Read More
Well, the staff was, they were accepting and as I say with Snedigar, the curator of reptiles and amphibians, so he was certainly embracing, especially with my museum background. And the other principal curator was Karl Plath, who was curator birds. And Karl had an artist background. Indeed was still… Read More
And then the process, we were sampling the urine from all of the primates. And there was considerable resistance to sampling all of the primates, especially when you’re cramming them into steel cages to get uncontaminated urine. But eventually some came around, Jim Raul, for instance, in the small mammal… Read More
Were you embraced by the staff?… Read More
Was it, any other zoo ever at the time have anything like this?… Read More
Not really, not really, Mark, in terms of the field as a whole. There simply wasn’t the consistent application. I was proceeded in terms of my position by an investigator at New York at Bronx Zoo in the middle 30s. They had hired a man who was into animal behavior,… Read More
So it was quite an occasion at the University of Chicago when people from all over the world came to testify to the importance of that singular work in terms of how we had come to be, how we had evolved, and so on, and so forth. So that reinforced… Read More
So this university connection was a very positive one for the zoo. Read More
Well, in terms of my making up the title on curator and coordinator of research, what I wanted to do was try to involve, especially, other people in studies of the animals and it didn’t matter what it was, whether it was in terms of the medical side of the… Read More
At any rate, so I did find some colleagues in respect to getting oriented and whatnot, but it wasn’t from the head of the zoo at the time, because he was preoccupied with the welfare and the behavior of the new newly acquired okapi. Now you gave yourself a title,… Read More
And what did you see your responsibilities as?… Read More
And he was a gifted person himself in terms of being able to articulate and craft words. And, for instance, Encyclopedia Britannica was producing a little children’s book. And it really was atrociously written. And at the last moment, they had photos, et cetera, they were all set to print. Read More
(George laughing) Well, in terms of what I found when I came to Brookfield and explored on my own for the first month was that the director at the time was Robert Bean, the son of the original director. And he was absolutely entranced by, as I say, the arrival… Read More
So it was a quite good facility. And so I established quotas in the animal hospital and began dallying about in terms of what kinds of studies I might carry on. And in the process, of course, I got to know Robert Snedigar, the curator of the reptile house. And… Read More
What had you gotten yourself into?… Read More
Who was the director?… Read More