Everything about Sidney Dillon Ripley totally explained
Sidney Dillon Ripley (
20 September 1913 -
12 March 2001 ) was a noted
American ornithologist and leader in
wildlife conservation. He served as Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution from 1964 to 1984.
Biography
Ripley was born in
New York City and studied at St. Paul's School in
Concord, New Hampshire. In
1936 he graduated with a
B.A. from
Yale University. His great-grandfather,
Sidney Dillon, was President of the
Union Pacific Railroad. A visit to
India at age 13, along with his sister, included a walking tour into
Ladakh and western
Tibet. This led to his lifelong interest in the
ornithology of India. He decided that
birds were more interesting than
law, and he began studying
zoology at
Columbia University. He later obtained a
Ph.D. in zoology from
Harvard in
1943.
He served as Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution from
1964 to
1984. The
S. Dillon Ripley Center was named in his honor. In
1970, he helped found
Smithsonian magazine.
During
World War II, he joined service in the
Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the
Central Intelligence Agency, and was in charge of
American intelligence services in Southeast
Asia. After the war he taught at Yale and was a
Fulbright fellow in
1950 and a
Guggenheim fellow in
1954. He became a full professor and director of the
Peabody Museum of Natural History.
He joined the
AOU in
1938, became an Elective Member in
1942, and a fellow in
1951. In
1985 he was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award. He was awarded honorary degrees from 15 colleges and universities, including
Brown, Yale,
Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and
Cambridge in the
U.K..
Ripley served for many years on the board of the
World Wildlife Fund in the U.S., and was the third president of the
International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP, now
BirdLife International
).
Legacy
He had intended to produce a definitive guide to the birds of
South Asia, but became too ill to play an active part in its realisation. However, the eventual authors, his assistant,
Pamela C. Rasmussen, and artist
John C. Anderton, named the final two-volume guide as
Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide in his honour.
Selected writings
- The Land and Wildlife of Tropical Asia (1964; Series: LIFE Nature Library)
- Rails of the World - A Monograph of the Family Rallidae (1977)
- Birds of Bhutan, with Salim Ali and Biswamoy Biswas
- Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan, with Salim Ali (10 volumes)
Further Information
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