Weidensaul, S. ., Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art, Schuylkill Haven, USA, scottweidensaul@verizon.net
Ornithological cradle: Philadelphia and the birth of American bird study
As the hub of New World scientific learning in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Philadelphia played a leading role in the development of North American ornithology. William Bartram made the first rough calculations of continental bird populations at the family estate here; and with Bartram's help, Scottish poet (and convicted blackmailer) Alexander Wilson worked himself into an early grave in the city, creating American Ornithology. Just upriver a few miles at Mill Grove, a young French fop who had renamed himself John James Audubon was ignoring business to paint birds. The Academy of Natural Sciences nurtured generations of pioneering ornithologists from Thomas Say and Titian Peale to the brilliant ornithologist (and irascable crank) John Cassin. The city was an international crossroads for luminaries like Thomas Nuttall and Charles Lucien Bonaparte, who did much to catalogue the avifauna of the newly explored continent, and it was home to Graceanna Lewis, the first serious female ornithologist in the country, whose career came to a premature end with the death of her mentor, Cassin, in 1869.
Session #:PL1Date: 08-13-2009
Presentation is given by student: No
Presenting authors are underlined.