[188] With the help of Beebe's friend the physician Henry Lloyd, Beebe conducted an expedition in the West Indies examining the stomach contents of tuna, which uncovered previously unknown larval forms of several species of fish. [104][110] In January 1919 Roosevelt, who was severely ill by this point, wrote to Beebe from his hospital bed congratulating Beebe on the publication of his monograph. After following several leads which came to nothing, his goal was realized when George Withers, who owned a rubber plantation on the Mazaruni River, offered him the use of a large house on his property for this purpose. [34] In July 1903, at the request of a lawyer named Louis Whealton whom the zoo's director William Temple Hornaday regarded as a potential donor to the zoo, Beebe and Blair went on another expedition to Virginia's Barrier Islands. [205], Rancho Grande was located at a mountain pass in a branch of the Andes known as the Venezuelan Coastal Range, which was an important migration route for butterflies, and the station proved very lucrative in the study of insects. [58] Another goal of this expedition was to find and capture a hoatzin, a bird whose clawed wings caused it to be considered an important link in the evolution of birds from reptiles. Beebe based this theory on his observation that the hatchlings and embryos of some modern birds possess long quill feathers on their legs, which he regarded as an atavism; he also noticed vestiges of leg-wings on one of the specimens of Archaeopteryx. William R Beebe age 79 of Delta, Ohio, passed away at Swanton Health care and retirement Center Sunday, October 25, 2020. [21], Osborn appointed Beebe to the position of assistant curator of ornithology. William C. Beebe, 49, passed away peacefully at Neighborhood Hospice in West Chester, PA on September 23, 2012. [158] Bermuda's governor Louis Bols introduced Beebe to Prince George, who was fascinated by Beebe's books, and Prince George persuaded Beebe to take him helmet diving. To plant a tree in memory of William D Beebe, please visit Tribute Store . [90], Blair's departure came as a shock to Beebe, and he was severely depressed for more than a year afterward. July 6, 1958 - July 6, 2022 (64 years old) Silver Springs, Florida William W. Beebe Obituary Here is William W. Beebe's obituary. As a compromise, Beebe decided to continue his marine research in Bermuda, where she and Beebe had spent their honeymoon. [242] The Archives of the Wildlife Conservation Society also holds several collections related to the Department of Tropical Research. Roosevelt subsequently wrote an article about the station for Scribner's Magazine, which helped to build public support for the station.[98]. Burial will follow at Cimarron Valley Cemetery under direction of Cordry-Gritz Funeral Home. As he gained experience with helmet diving, Beebe soon became an enthusiastic advocate of it, believing it to be something that should be experienced by everyone who had the opportunity to do so. [29][30] Blair subsequently accompanied Beebe on several of his expeditions, and as a writer herself, frequently assisted Beebe with his own writing. Published on March 29, 2022 . Beebe admired Roosevelt's skill as a field naturalist as well as his advocacy of conservation, and Roosevelt's fame made his support highly valuable in Beebe's scientific endeavors. [226][227] Jocelyn accompanied him on this expedition for the purpose of documenting Asia's fiddler crabs. [50], In 1907, the journal Zoologica was founded by Osborn and Hornaday specifically as a place for Beebe to publish his research. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of William can be made to the Lung Association of Saskatchewan. For his contributions to science, he was elected a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [155] Elswyth and Beebe had an open marriage, in which neither expected sexual exclusivity from the other so long as their life together was not damaged. [51] The following year Beebe received a promotion from the Zoological Society, placing him on equal footing with the research scientists at the Museum of Natural History. He was born in Westchester, Pennsylvania and moved to central Florida in the early. [15] At Columbia he studied under Henry Fairfield Osborn, and developed a close relationship with him which would endure until Osborn's death in 1935. This study yielded a collection of 3,776 fish of 136 species, many of them also new to science. With the help of a letter of recommendation from Roosevelt, he was given the duty of flying aerial photography planes over German gun emplacements. [281] In 1974, Beebe's property was donated to the newly established Asa Wright Nature Center. [241] Even in the possession of Firestone Library, Beebe's papers remained inaccessible without Jocelyn's permission, and most scholars were prevented from using them until Jocelyn offered access to the writer, Carol Grant Gould, to write Beebe's biography. [133] The Arcturus was outfitted with Beebe's pulpit and boom walk from the Noma, as well as cages and tanks for live animals, chemicals and vials to preserve dead ones, and a darkroom for developing film and studying the bioluminescent animals they hoped to encounter. View Obituary & Service Information "[258] Due to Beebe's renewed emphasis on field research at a time when laboratory studies were becoming the dominant trend in biology, more recent field researchers such as Jane Goodall and George Schaller are also sometimes considered his intellectual descendants. This was the first time a biologist observed deep-sea animals in their native environment and set several successive records for the deepest dive ever performed by a human, the deepest of which stood until it was broken by Barton 15 years later. [41][42] The book was enthusiastically well received.[43]. [71] The next ship took them to Singapore, where Beebe established a base of operations for the next stage of his expedition. [77][78], The last portion of Beebe's journey took him to China, from which they made an unplanned visit to Japan to escape a riot as well as a surge of bubonic plague. [179] Barton was often resentful of this, believing Beebe to be deliberately hogging the fame. [195] During this time Beebe was also forming a close friendship with Winnie-the-Pooh's creator A. [28] He then went on to serve as an honorary curator from 1919 to 1962. In response to Beebe's dismissal, Horsfall retorted that he had been ill-treated by Beebe from the beginning of the expedition and that his subsequent actions had been for the express purpose of revenge. In recognition of the research conducted on his expeditions, he was granted honorary doctorates from Tufts and Colgate University. [115] Beebe was enthusiastic about the new station, and it proved very successful for conducting the same detailed analyses of wildlife within small areas that had been performed at Kalacoon. [191] Beebe described his two expeditions onboard the Zaca in his books Zaca Venture and The Book of Bays, in which he emphasized his concern for threatened habitats and his dismay at human destruction. [170] Beebe's observations were relayed up the phone line to be recorded by Gloria Hollister,[171] his chief technical associate who was also in charge of preparing specimens obtained from dredging. The first issue of the journal contained twenty papers, ten of which were written by Beebe, and two more of which were jointly written by him and Lee Saunders Crandall, the zoo's assistant curator of birds. [73] Continuing without Horsfall, Beebe and Blair traveled to Batavia in Java,[74] to the island of Madura just to the north, and to Belitung between Borneo and Sumatra. This promotion explicitly granted him two months off each year, for further research expeditions. Heilmann examined hatchlings of many other bird species, both closely related to those studied by Beebe and belonging to more primitive species, in hope of finding additional evidence for the leg-wings which Beebe had documented. "[185][186] It is unclear whether Elswyth knew of Beebe's affair with Gloria, but if she did she appears to not have minded it. [132] His ship for this expedition was the steam yacht Arcturus, presented to the New York Zoological Society by Executive Committee member Henry D. Whiton. Beebe's second book, The Bird, Its Form and Function, was published in 1906. [211] Beebe described his experiences at Rancho Grande in his 1949 book High Jungle, which was the last of Beebe's major books. The product of Jocelyn Crane's search for a potential research station in Trinidad and Tobago was a house on a hill overlooking the Arima Valley, which was known as Verdant Vale. [245], Beebe described his religious beliefs as a combination of Presbyterianism and Buddhism. [247] He was highly critical of efforts to use science to justify political ideologies, such as socialism[248] or the belief that women were inferior to men. No, I don't want any bored men around me. Guestbook (3) Follow story. [96] During this expedition, Beebe was also amazed to discover the number and variety of organisms living under a single tree and pioneered the method of studying a small area of wilderness for an extended amount of time. William met and married Sandra K. Herring. He was born January 23, 1941 in Toledo Ohio to Ronald Sinclair and Mary Jane (Buermile) Beebe. In response to this request, Beebe retorted: Boredom is immoral. [197] Transportation to and from Bermuda resumed in 1940, and Beebe returned there in May 1941, but the environment was slowly being transformed due to the war. William D Beebe. Beebe had frequently worried that Elswyth would write a biography of him after his death. Dr. William A. Beebe of Weeki Wachee, Fla., formerly of Edison, died Tuesday at his home, surrounded by his loving family. [120] Passing through the Sargasso Sea on the way to the Galpagos, Beebe was fascinated by the diversity of life that could be found in the sargassum weed floating on the surface and spent several days scooping the weed from the water to examine the creatures that lived in it. William Thomas Beebe. [83] based on his observations he also proposed a new evolutionary model of pheasant ancestry, involving a period of rapid diversification followed by more typical and gradual changes. Explore Life Stories, Offer Condolences & Send Flowers. The establishment of the Kalacoon research station enabled Beebe to research the ecology of the surrounding jungle in far more detail than had been possible during his earlier expeditions. He sailed along the border between the currents for several days to document it, theorizing that it could be the cause of the unusual climate which South America had recently been experiencing. The novel was an account of a young woman who falls in love with and eventually marries, a much older adventurer who strongly resembled Beebe. Death Notice. [33], The following February, Beebe, and Blair went on an expedition to the Florida Keys, because Beebe was suffering from a throat infection and the zoo believed that the warm climate would be beneficial to his health. [255] Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. recounts one incident in which Beebe turned down a scientist who wished to work with him when the scientist described boredom with his current duties as one of his reasons for requesting this. William 'Bill' Harley Beebe. [203] Although Beebe's research at Caripito was productive, he felt that the extremity of its wet-dry cycle made it impractical as a research station,[204] and the expanding oil operations in the region were in danger of destroying the local environment. In return, Beebe would pay for other expenses such as chartering a ship to raise and lower the sphere, and as the owner of the sphere, Barton would accompany Beebe on his expeditions in it. [234] Beebe also began to be afflicted with a throat ailment which may have been Sjgren's syndrome, although lacking a complete understanding of what caused it, Beebe and his doctors referred to it as "mango mouth". This expedition marked the beginning of a shift for Beebe from ornithology to the study of tropical ecosystems. William met and married Sandra K. Herring. "[196], Although Beebe continued to use Nonsuch Island as his base of operations throughout the 1930s, with the onset of World War II in 1939 it was announced that the ferry linking Bermuda to New York would soon be making its final run, requiring Beebe and his team to hastily abandon their station there. To prevent this possibility, he left all of his papers and journals to Jocelyn. [17] Beebe never applied to receive a degree from Columbia,[18] although years later he was granted honorary doctorates from both Tufts and Colgate University. [142], Shortly after Beebe's return from this expedition, Anthony Kuser requested that Beebe produce a condensed, popular version of his pheasant monograph. [229] Snow became a regular visitor to Simla,[230] and in return Beebe provided financial assistance for some of Snow's own research. During these trips, Beebe also developed an interest in dredging, the practice of using nets to haul up animals that lived deep underwater and attempting to study them before they died or disintegrated. [168], From 1930 to 1934, Beebe and Barton used the Bathysphere to conduct a series of dives of increasing depth off the coast of Nonsuch Island, becoming the first people to observe deep-sea animals in their native environment. [81] Some of these pheasants, such as Sclater's impeyan or Himalayan monal, had never before been seen in the wild by Americans or Europeans. [144][145] During the course of writing this book, Beebe was reminded of many experiences during the pheasant expedition which he had not included in his original monograph, and wrote an additional book titled Pheasant Jungles about his adventures during this expedition. [207] During his work at Rancho Grande, Beebe broke his leg in a fall from a ladder, and the forced immobility which resulted from having his leg in a cast presented him with a new opportunity for observing the area's wildlife. [47] With his many writings about the dangers of environmental destruction, Beebe helped to raise public awareness about this topic. Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Beebe left college before obtaining a degree to work at the then newly opened New York Zoological Park, where he was given the duty of caring for the zoo's birds. William Thomas Beebe. He was born in. His theory that organisms must be understood in the context of the ecosystems they inhabit was completely new for its time and has been highly influential. [62] Hornaday strongly objected to this proposal, describing Kuser as an "evil genius" who was attempting to steal Beebe away from his duties at the zoo. Mr. Beebe was born on September 22nd, 1946 at Holland. William Beebe was more famous in the United States than any other American naturalist before the days of television. He quickly distinguished himself in his work for the zoo, first with his skill in designing habitats for its bird population, and soon also with a series of research expeditions of increasing length, including an expedition around the world to document the world's pheasants. [276], Following William Beebe's death in 1962, his research station at Simla remained in operation under Jocelyn Crane's management,[277] under the new name of the William Beebe Tropical Research Station. Born August 7, 1944 in Manito to Rollin A. and Rosie B. When he felt that the pressure of working under him had become too great, he would announce that his birthday was approaching, and his staff would have several days free from work to celebrate it. We are sad to announce that on February 19, 2019, at the age of 57, William Beebe (Brookwood, Alabama) passed away. [223] Local children periodically brought animal specimens to Beebe at Simla and asked him to classify them. While 83 of the fish that he described were done so in a conventional manner, the remaining four were done so based on visual observations. [167] Beebe named their vessel the Bathysphere, from the Greek prefix bathy- meaning "deep" combined with "sphere". [271], Gerhard Heilmann discussed Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis at considerable length in his 1926 book The Origin of Birds. [55][56] Roosevelt frequently provided praise for Beebe's books, and went on to write introductions to Beebe's books Tropical Wild Life and Jungle Peace. [104] Beebe generally did not make the exact nature of his military service clear in his writings about it, although he expressed his general dismay at the realities of the war. He was born on Oct. 7, 1982, in Marietta, to Gary and. [6][7] The American Museum of Natural History, which opened the year that Beebe was born, fostered Beebe's love of nature and was an early influence on him. The paper which finally resulted from this study was published in Zoologica in 1925 and was the first study of its kind in the developing field of tropical ecology. [105] Beebe subsequently wrote several articles describing his war experience for Scribner's Magazine and Atlantic Monthly. The Galpagos animals generally showed no fear of humans, causing the team to have a high degree of success at capturing live specimens for the zoo. [52] The first expedition conducted under his new privileges, beginning in February 1908, took him to Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela to research birds and insects. William Beebe's passing on Wednesday, November 23, 2022 has been publicly announced by Strano and Feeley Family Funeral Home in Newark, DE. These expeditions formed the basis for a large quantity of writing for both popular and academic audiences, including an account of his pheasant expedition titled A Monograph of the Pheasants and published in four volumes from 1918 to 1922. [61], In December 1909, businessman and philanthropist Anthony R. Kuser proposed to the zoo that Beebe be allowed to go on a voyage around the world to document the world's pheasants, which would be financed by Kuser. Reproductions of the illustrations were in the process of being printed when World War I began, holding up the completion of the project for the next four years. Text size. 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