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3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

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CuratorofOrnithologyattheAmericanMuseumofNaturalHistory 115<br />

Fig.3.7. Groundbreaking for the Whitney Wing of the American Museum of Natural History,<br />

17 April 1931. H.F. Osborn, President of the AMNH, uses a bronze shovel (now in the<br />

Department’s archives) in the ceremonial onset of construction of the building. Members of<br />

the Department of Ornithology present are (to the left of the President) R. C. Murphy, Alice<br />

K. Fraser (secretary), E. Mayr, Katherine Johns (secretary), C. O’Brien, and J.T. Zimmer<br />

(AMNH Library photographic collection, a portion of negative no. 313534)<br />

ington, 1952). Mayr turned down several employment offers by various universities,<br />

partly with regard to Dr. Sanford who had done so much for him. When<br />

Sanford died in 1950 and Harvard University offered him a research professorship<br />

in 1953, Mayr felt that he now was free to accept and joined the staff of the<br />

Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His Alexander<br />

Agassiz Professorship was not restricted to the Bird Department, but was a positionintheMuseumofComparativeZoologyasawhole.

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