3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

48 2 The Budding Scientist
ferent disciplines exchanged their views. He listened to presentations on faunistic
observations in China (R. Mell) and on ethnological research in Peru (G. Tessmann)
and had also contacts with the Mammalogical Society, the Zoological Institute of
the University and their representatives.
Mayr now lived in a furnished room in Berlin-Hermsdorf with the Schneiders,
a house right at the edge of the woods. Hermsdorf was on the same electrical transit
line as Stresemann’s home in Frohnau, one stop beyond Hermsdorf. Otherwise,
Mayr did not enjoy much social life while he was an assistant curator at the
museum. However, several students enlarged Stresemann’s group of pre-docs.
Mayr joined some young university staff members playing volleyball (Faustball)
andpersuadedStresemanntodosoonoccasion,buthedroppedoutsoon.There
was still no girlfriend.
History of bird migration. In Mayr’s paper on the evolutionary origins and
development of bird migration (written in 1927 when he was 23 years old and
completed by his colleague W. Meise after Mayr’s departure for New Guinea;
Mayr and Meise 1930c) he is convinced that most of these phenomena cannot be
explained completely through evolution by natural selection “which can eliminate
but not create anything new” (a view he would vigorously attack later). This is
the last anti-selectionist statement found in Mayr’s publications. Because of his
Lamarckian views he was not able to discuss, much less answer, valid questions
that he posed, e.g., “In which way originate genetically determined changes of
migratory routes?” Mayr and Meise (l.c.) endorsed Thomson’s four-fold division
of complementary causes of migration (function, origin, physiology) but restricted
themselves to a discussion of the evolutionary-zoogeographical development of
bird migration (Beatty 1994).
In their opinion the route of migration is originally a backtracking of the route
of immigration. However, subsequent phenomena, such as route abbreviation and
route prolongation complicate any historical interpretation of the original home
range of migratory birds. The major reason for route prolongation in species which
expand their breeding area northward seems to be a strengthened physiological
apparatus leading to a southward displacement of the wintering area. Mayr ends his
theoretical discussion with the remark that without hypotheses, scientific progress
is not achieved—as emphasized in the hypothetico-deductive method of testing
previously conceived hypotheses. This theoretical paper was reviewed in detail
by Mayr’s colleague at the AMNH John T. Nichols (1931) who emphasized the
point that the migratory drive, once started, tended to increase, “causing the bird
to swing annually pendulum-wise over an ever increasing course.” The original
home of the species may then lie neither in the present breeding or wintering areas,
but at some intermediate location.
Expeditions to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands
(1928–1930)
After Mayr had started his assistantship at the Zoological Museum Berlin in July
1926 Dr. Stresemann, mindful of his earlier promise, attempted to place him