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
What did you come to?… Read More
Can you kind of talk to me in descriptive terms what was the zoo like when you first arrived?… Read More
And I felt, well, what the heck?… Read More
It’s worth Fling, so to speak. But it was a very, very interesting engaging time to come to such an institution and help develop a program that had been committed to back in the 20s when the Chicago Zoological Society was formed. So that’s how I came to be at… Read More
And that was in terms of research and why they favored me in the, (George chuckles) why they even considered me in terms of this position, God knows, but as I say, I had previous acquaintance with K. P. Schmidt and that’s how I came to Brookfield, because of them. Read More
In terms of whether I saw myself going on to academia or not, what I saw when I concluded, or was near concluding my studies on the variation in these lizards that was the basis of my thesis, the documenting the divisions of this species on the islands basically corresponded… Read More
And whom I made acquaintance with before. K.P. came over to Michigan and gave an absolutely outstanding lecture on the Humboldt Current. And there were no slides, nothing, but he created the Humboldt Current and all of the birds, the fishes, et cetera, so that felt the surf, you felt… Read More
Well, now, after moving on and getting your degree from the University of Michigan, did you see yourself going into academia or were you thinking of different directions?… Read More
And (chuckles) it’s a wonder I’m here today, because this was a American Museum, Natural History expedition. The co-owner of the little schooner, a 45-foot schooner had been a Navy destroyer commander. So I felt he must know the business but (sighs) he didn’t, and he couldn’t read the water,… Read More
But it was quite an adventurous time in terms of collecting creatures. And particularly I concentrated on the Leiocephalus, the curly-tailed lizards that were so abundant right through the islands, on the beaches for the most part. Read More
So it was a worthwhile first summer in grad school. But then came a real opportunity in terms of the… An offer that came to not go back to Mexico, which I’d visited with a couple of my Charleston friends, Moseman and Azel. And where we’d collected salamanders and other… Read More
But I turned off in terms of ornithology as a result, especially because the replacement curator at the museum came down from Cleveland, Cleveland Museum. And all he was interested in were the lengths of the primary feathers on the wings of the local birds. And I felt this was… Read More
And so I spent a summer, sort of final summer in my college time checking all of the references in their book. And this involved, among other things, going through the Audubon Folio and the museum had original Audubons. It had Catesby, et cetera. So I had a wonderful experience… Read More
But he’d introduced me to so many things that, before I went to Michigan, my final summer was at the Emory University Field Station in Southwest in Georgia, in Baker County, Georgia. The Emory University Field Station was not populated by Emory University students. It was University of Georgia students… Read More
Both masters and doctorate were at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I only applied to three places. And because of my interest at that time in terms of going on in herpetological studies, I applied to Florida, Harvard and Michigan. Florida wanted some 200 bucks at that time. Read More
And he ran out to the guy, “You’ve killed my fox!” (George laughing) And the guy of course was extremely apologetic, et cetera, et cetera. And (chuckles) so Arthur comes back to the Model T with the fox in his arms. And so that was a pretty good specimen collection… Read More
Now your advanced degrees were where?… Read More