Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy 123

CuratorofOrnithologyattheAmericanMuseumofNaturalHistory 113
sexual dimorphism of Passer species and some other birds was not affected by male
or female gonadal hormones or else that it is affected by a pituitary hormone, as in
fowl, certain weaver birds and others. He was a good friend of Erwin Stresemann.
The last stop was in Chicago where Mayr spent a few hours at the Field Museum.
Gretel had gone home several days earlier because she was worried about their
children who had been with friends for the duration of their parents’ trip.
Curator of Ornithology at the American Museum
of Natural History
For over 10 years Mayr worked mainly on bird collections of the Whitney South
Sea Expedition from Polynesia and Melanesia, on collections from many areas in
New Guinea, the Malay Archipelago and from southeastern Asia. A steady stream
of articles and books documented his research activities.
Mayr also assembled general data for a comprehensive analysis of geographical
variation and speciation in birds for which purpose the large collections of the
Whitney South Sea Expedition from the islands of Oceania and of various expeditions
to New Guinea were unusually well suited. There was no better qualified
ornithologist to work on this rich material than Ernst Mayr whose scientific interests
had been directed toward taxonomic and evolutionary topics by Stresemann
and Rensch at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. Without realizing it, he
carried out in New York the suggestions he had written to Stresemann in May 1924
(pp. 27–28).
ThenaturalhistorymuseumofNewYorkCityislocatedalongCentralPark
West, between 77th and 81st Streets (Fig. 3.6). Since the 1930s its bird collections
had become the most comprehensive and most representative in the world and the
Department of Ornithology the foremost center of research. Numerous scientists
from all over the world came to study the collections in conjunction with their
own projects. The department occupies an entire eight-story building called the
Whitney Wing in honor of its patron Harry Payne Whitney (however, the Biology
of Birds Hall has been replaced by a Geology Hall in 2000). In early 1929, Whitney
had contributed stock worth half the cost of the building, or $750,000, with the
understanding that New York City provide for the other half. As Mary LeCroy
(2005: 39) related the story: “For once, the city acted quickly and okayed the
matching funds by the summer. The museum’s comptroller rushed out and sold
the stock against the advice of many, and he had the cash in hand when the
stock market crashed in the late summer of 1929!” Construction of the Whitney
wing began in April 1931 (Fig. 3.7), the collections and offices were transferred
to the new Whitney Wing during 1933–1935. However, the official opening and
dedication of the building took place only after the completion of the adjacent
“Rotunda,” the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, in 1939. After the purchase, in
1932, of the Rothschild Collection, the department held about 700,000 birds. Today
the collections comprise ca 1 million specimens representing more than 99% of all
known species of birds (Lanyon 1995; Vuilleumier 2001).