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William Beebe

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For the U.S. Army officer and Medal of Honor recipient, see William Sully Beebe.
William Beebe
Dr William Beebe (left), with Dr Jocelyn Crane and Dr 'Ted' Hill, Simla, Trinidad, 1959
BornJuly 29, 1877 (1877-07-29)
Brooklyn
DiedJune 4, 1962 (1962-06-05)
Trinidad
NationalityAmerican
Known forhis deep dives in the bathysphere; his monograph on pheasants, and numerous books on natural history.
Scientific career
Fieldsnaturalist
inventor

Charles William ("Will") Beebe (July 29, 1877 – June 4, 1962) was an American naturalist, explorer, and author.

Biography

Beebe wrote the cover story for this 1906 issue of the New York World's Sunday magazine.

Early life and education

William Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of the newspaper executive Charles Beebe. Although some sources have described him as an only child,[1] he had a younger brother named John who died in infancy.[2] Early in his life, his family moved to East Orange, New Jersey, where he began to acquire both his fascination with the natural world and his tendency to record everything he saw.[3][4] The American Museum of Natural History, which opened the year that Beebe was born, fostered Beebe's love of nature and was an early influence on him.[5]

In September 1891, Beebe began attending East Orange High School.[6] During his high school years Beebe developed an interest in collecting animals, particularly after receiving his first gun at the age of sixteen, and trained himself in taxidermy in order to preserve them.[7] Specimens that he was unable to collect for himself, he often obtained from a supply house known as Lattin's,[8] or by trading with other collectors.[9]

Beebe's first article was published while he was still in high school, a description of a bird called a brown creeper, which appeared in the January 1895 issue of the magazine Harper's Young People.[10] In 1896 he was accepted with advanced placement to Columbia University.[11] While attending university, Beebe frequently split his time between the university and the American Museum of Natural history, many of whose researchers were also professors at Columbia.[12] At Columbia Beebe studied under Henry Fairfield Osborn, and developed a close relationship with him which would endure for the rest of their lives.[13]

In 1896, he began attending Columbia University, where he was he was heavily influenced by Henry Fairfield Osborn. In 1899, at Osborn’s suggestion, he was appointed Curator of Ornithology for the New York Zoological Society.

In 1900, he began undertaking field research, which eventually led to him being made the New York Zoological Society’s Director of the Department of Tropical Research in 1919. In addition to the United States and Canada, he eventually undertook expeditions in Trinidad, Venezuela, Brazil and British Guiana.

Beebe wrote many popular books of his expeditions, some of which became best-sellers ("my potboilers") in the 1920s and 1930s. He was also a regular contributor to the National Geographic Magazine. The money from the sale of these books helped finance his later expeditions. He also wrote his magnificent three volume A Monograph of the Pheasants (1918–1922), which remains the classic reference on the subject.

Beebe was married twice. He and his first wife, Mary Blair Rice, were married in 1902 and divorced in 1913. On September 22, 1927 he married Helen Elswyth Thane Ricker (May 16, 1900 – 1981) an American romance novelist who wrote under the name of Elswyth Thane, to whom he remained married until his death in 1962.

The William Beebe Tropical Research Station (also known as Simla), which was established by William Beebe as a tropical research station for the New York Zoological Society. In 1949 Beebe bought the 'Verdant Vale' estate naming it after Simla in India, which he had visited in 1910.[14] Beebe was still very active well into his early 80's often observing, and recording details of nesting birds through his giant specially-made binoculars on a heavy tripod ("the biggest binoculars in the world!") from the verandah of his home. Even in his later years, he often climbed trees to better observe the eggs and nests of birds such as the Bearded Bellbird that he had discovered. He was always a kind and patient teacher and did everything he could to encourage budding young naturalists.

Throughout this period he made frequent trips to the U.S.A. and maintained an office in the Bronx Zoo where he would be joined by his favourite monkeys ("my children") who would climb all over him as he talked with visitors and colleagues.

The world-renowned American Audubon Society purchased Asa Wright's home, and the two properties were united. They are now run through collaboration with the Trinidad Field Naturalist Society as the Simla, one of the finest bird watching sites in the Caribbean.

Work and discoveries

In 1921, in Guyana, Beebe observed an ant mill and is now attributed with its discovery.[15]

File:WCS Beebe Barton 600.jpg
Beebe (left) and Otis Barton with the bathysphere.

His interest in deep-sea exploration led to the development of the bathysphere, a spherical metal diving vessel, with Otis Barton.[16][17][18] In 1930, he descended 183 m (600 ft) off Nonsuch Island in Bermuda, where in 1934 he made a record descent of 923m (3,028 ft).[16][17] Beebe made a total of 35 dives in the bathysphere between 1930 and 1934.[16]

He set up a camp for jungle studies in 1942 at Caripito, Venezuela. In 1950, when he was 73 years old, he bought with his own money 228 acres (92 hectares) of land in the Arima Valley (Trinidad and Tobago) which he named "Simla". This land became the New York Zoological Society's Tropical Research Station in Trinidad. The New York Zoological Society Simla Research Station was directed by Dr. Jocelyn Crane after Dr. Beebe's death and later donated to the Trust.

The Simla Research Station adjoined an old cocoa plantation owned by the remarkable Icelandic woman, Asa Wright, who for years was the entertaining and always patient host to the numerous scientists, artists, photographers and nature lovers who came to visit the Research Station.

Tetrapteryx

Beebe's illustration of "Tetrapteryx"

In 1915 William Beebe proposed that flight in birds evolved through what he referred to as a “Tetrapteryx stage”, with wings on both the front and hind limbs. Beebe based this hypothesis on studies of wing development in bird embryos.[19] Most modern paleontologists now regard Beebe’s Tetrapteryx hypothesis as having been correct, as a result of the discovery of feathered dinosaurs in the Liaoning province of China which appear to match Beebe’s predictions about the early stages in the evolution of bird flight. One of these, the small dromaeosaurid Microraptor gui, possessed asymmetrical flight feathers on both its front and hind limbs and has been described by Richard O. Prum as “[looking] as if it could have glided straight out of the pages of Beebe’s notebooks.”[20]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Crandall, Lee S. "In Memoriam: Charles William Beebe. The Auk 81 (36-41), January 1964.
  2. ^ Gould page 12
  3. ^ Gould page 14
  4. ^ Welker page 6-7
  5. ^ Gould page 14-15
  6. ^ Welker page 7
  7. ^ Gould page 24-5
  8. ^ Gould page 20
  9. ^ Gould page 28
  10. ^ Gould page 33
  11. ^ Gould page 37, page 41
  12. ^ Gould page 42-43
  13. ^ Welker 9-10
  14. ^ Rudder (2009), p. 6.
  15. ^ http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/2009/07/15/ants-spiral-of-death/
  16. ^ a b c Brand, V (1977). "Submersibles - Manned and Unmanned". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. 7 (3). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  17. ^ a b Beebe, W (1934). Half Mile Down. Harcourt Brace and Company. ASIN B00178ICYA.
  18. ^ Matsen, B (2005). Descent - The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss. Pantheon Books. ISBN 1400075017.
  19. ^ Beebe, C. W. A. (1915). "Tetrapteryx stage in the ancestry of birds." Zoologica, 2: 38-52.
  20. ^ Prum, R. O. (2003). "Dinosaurs Take to the Air." Nature, 421: 323-324.

References

  • Berra, Tim M. William Beebe: An annotated Bibiography. Hamden: Archon Books, 1977. ISBN 0208016082
  • Gould, Carol Grant. The Remarkable Life of William Beebe. Washington DC: Island Press, 2004. ISBN 1559638583.
  • Matsen, Brad. Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. ISBN 1400075017
  • Rudder, Joy. The old house and the dream: The story of The Asa Wright Nature Centre. Port of Spain, Trinidad: Prospect Press, 2009. ISBN 976-95082-1-7.
  • Welker, Robert Henry. Natural Man: The Life of William Beebe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975. ISBN 0253339758
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