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Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy 123

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Curatorof<strong>Ornithology</strong>attheAmericanMuseumofNaturalHistory 121<br />

Fig.3.10. Staff members of the Department of <strong>Ornithology</strong> (AMNH), photograph taken<br />

on Dr. Chapman’s 75th birthday, 12 June 1939. Seated (left to right) ElsieM.B.Naumburg<br />

(Research Associate), John T. Zimmer (Executive Curator), Frank M. Chapman (Curator),<br />

R.C. Murphy (Curator of Oceanic Birds), Ernst Mayr (Associate Curator of the Whitney-<br />

Rothschild Collections). St<strong>and</strong>ing (left to right) Dean Amadon (Research Assistant), Charles<br />

Schell (Assistant), Ruth Bowdon (Secretary), Charles O’Brien (Assistant Curator), Mildred<br />

Feger (Secretary), Hugh Birckhead (Assistant), E. Thomas Gilliard (Research Assistant)<br />

(AMNH Library photographic collection, negative no. 291112)<br />

the United States from France <strong>and</strong> became a dentist. He came often to the museum<br />

<strong>and</strong> Mayr introduced him to taxonomy from the late 1940s, at first working jointly<br />

with him on a revision of the drongo family (Dicruridae) <strong>and</strong> later supervising his<br />

long series of revisions of Palearctic birds. Eventually Vaurie was appointed to the<br />

staff <strong>and</strong> gave up dentistry becoming a full curator at the museum.<br />

Known to Dr. Sanford were two wealthy young men, Richard Archbold (1907–<br />

1976) <strong>and</strong> John Sterling Rockefeller (1904–1988). The former invited Mayr to his<br />

father’s quail shooting place in Thomasville, Georgia in November 1931 (see p. 111).<br />

During the 1930s, Dick Archbold financed <strong>and</strong> led three museum expeditions<br />

to New Guinea (Morse 2000). Three additional Archbold expeditions under the<br />

leadership of L.J. Brass explored the Cape York area of northern Australia (1947–<br />

1948), the outlying isl<strong>and</strong>s of southeastern New Guinea (1956–1957), <strong>and</strong> the<br />

central highl<strong>and</strong>s of New Guinea (1958–1959). Sterling Rockefeller provided the<br />

funds with which E. Stresemann (Berlin) sent Georg Stein to Timor <strong>and</strong> Sumba in<br />

1932. Rockefeller was supposed to work out this collection under Mayr’s guidance,

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