DEAN OF AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGISTS: THE MULTIPLE LEGACIES OF FRANK M. CHAPMAN OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Auk, The, Apr 2005 by Vuilleumier, François

FRANK MICHLER CHAPMAN, the "acknowledged dean of American ornithologists" (Lanyon 1995), was a great systematist who paved the way for modern research on South American birds. He was also an intrepid explorer, a major contributor to the growth and development of museum education, and a respected conservationist. His lectures were popular, his books ushered in the era of field ornithology and birding, and his enthusiasm for Barro Colorado Island helped make that 1,500-ha speck of land a world-renowned center for tropical research. Here, I describe some of those accomplishments and their legacies, first reviewing Chapman's career, then focusing on his qualities as an administrator ("The Chief") and on the staff he gathered around him ("the golden years"), before turning to his philosophy of museum education, his dual personality as a collector and conservationist, his research in avian systematics and biogeography, and his role in popularizing Barro Colorado Island as a tropical research center. Finally, I discuss the Chapman Fund, perhaps his best-known legacy, which was created after his death 60 years ago.

CHAPMAN'S CAREER

Frank Michler Chapman died in New York City on 15 November 1945, at age 81. He had "reported for duty" at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) 57 years earlier, on 1 March 1888, as assistant to Joel Asaph Alien, at a "salary of fifty dollars a month" (Chapman 1933: 59). He spent the next 54 years at the AMNH, 22 of them (1920-1942) as the first Chairman of its Department of Ornithology. Twenty-six years older than Chapman, Alien was an extraordinary figure himself. A former student of Louis Agassiz at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University, Alien (1838-1921) had come to the AMNH three years before Chapman, on 1 May 1885, to head the newly created Department of Mammals and Birds (Chapman 1922a, 1927). Joel Alien was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1876), cofounded the American Ornithologists' Union (1883) and became its first president (1883-1890), edited The Auk for 28 years (1884-1911), headed the Department of Mammals and Birds at the AMNH for 35 years (1885-1920), co-authored the first three editions of the Check-List of North American Birds (1886, 1895, 1910), pursued research programs in mammalogy, ornithology, systematics, and biogeography, and published more than 1,400 monographs, papers, and notes (Alien 1916).

Working under Alien in the department of mammals and birds, Chapman became curator in charge of birds in 1908 and associate curator of birds in 1910. Chapman's big break came in 1920 when "a separate department of birds was established, of which he was named Chairman, remaining at the helm until his retirement on June 30, 1942" (Murphy 1950:312). Like Alien, Chapman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1921). He also became president of the AOU (its tenth, 1911-1914) and received its Brewster Medal in 1933 for a revised edition of his Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America. He published 17 books, hundreds of scientific articles and notes, and scores of editorials and popular pieces.

Chapman carried out field work on Neotropical birds in the West Indies, from Mexico to Panama, and from Colombia to southern Chile. Distinguished ornithologists described species or subspecies of birds in his honor (e.g. Elliott Coues, Robert Ridgway, Carl Hellmayr, W. E. Clyde Todd, and Jacques Berlioz, as did his staff members, including Elsie Naumburg, Ludlow Griscom, John Zimmer, and Thomas Gilliard). Several of the species and subspecies named for Chapman ended up as synonyms of other taxa, but Hellmayr's (1907) Chapman's Swift (Chaetura chapmani) and Gilliard's (1940) Chapman's Bristle-Tyrant (Phylloscartes chapmani) are still considered valid species.

Chapman met some of the greatest ornithologists of his time, including, in America, William Brewster, Charles B. Cory, Daniel G. Elliot, Edgar A. Mearns, C. Hart Merriam, and Robert Ridgway. Chapman (1933:41) "was awed by the casual manner in which [Brewster] said he would describe as new races various birds of which he had collected as specimens." Merriam, he wrote, "is a genius and the fact is stamped on him" (Chapman 1933:44). "Coues was not a man to talk to unless you had something to say, or he considered you a worthy listener" (Chapman 1933:51). About Ridgway, Chapman (1933:44) stated: "You might advance views contrary to his published statements and known ideas and he would simply smile and not contradict you." Mearns and Chapman "had the habit of working late-long after the elevator had stopped running-and would go down the stairs with locked arms singing-for some unknown reason-a song about the Wild Man of Borneo" (Chapman 1933:63-64). About Gory: "I have never met a man so gifted as Charles Cory. He had the inherent potentialities as well as the means to win marked success in a surprising number of widely different fields" (Chapman 1933:53). In England, at the 1905 International Congress of Ornithology, Chapman met famous "ornithologists with whose work I had long been familiar" (Chapman 1933:176): Alfred Newton, Philip Lutley Sclater, R. Bowdler Sharpe, Walter Rothschild, and Ernst Hartert from England; Hans von Berlepsch from Germany; Carl Hellmayr from Austria and Germany; Einar Lönnberg from Sweden; and Arrigoni degli Oddi from Italy. "Of all this group, Sharpe was the outstanding figure," he claimed (Chapman 1933:177).