[103] With his new position, Beebe no longer had the duty of caring for the zoo's animals, freeing him to devote himself fully to his writing and research. 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. [23] Beebe placed much importance on the birds being given as much space as possible, and proposed the building of a "flying cage" the size of a football field. Beebe had far more field experience than either of the two others accompanying him on the expedition, G. Inness Hartley and Herbert Atkins, making this his introduction to the role of a mentor. [282], Now under the management of the Asa Wright Nature Center, the William Beebe Tropical Research Station has gradually been renovated. [127] Beebe continued to battle depression during this trip to Kartabo, both over his earlier loss of Blair, and over the death of his mother Nettie, who had died shortly before the beginning of the expedition. 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. [237] Both accounts agree that throughout his final years Beebe remained fond of playing practical jokes on his visitors at Simla,[237] and retained his sense of humor even within days of his death. [215][249] Among the most significant of Beebe's influences on other researchers was Rachel Carson, who regarded Beebe as both a friend and an inspiration. [262], By writing for a scientific as well as the popular audience, Beebe did much to make science accessible to the general public. [29][30] Blair subsequently accompanied Beebe on several of his expeditions, and as a writer herself, frequently assisted Beebe with his own writing. [89] On the other hand, some biographers have suggested that Beebe suffered a nervous breakdown during the expedition and that he may have contributed his own part to Blair's alienation. U.S., Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current. [] Without telling him so, we must take care of him."[104]. Beebe was reluctant to accept speaking engagements because of the effect this had on his voice, although he continued to give lectures on occasion with Jocelyn's help. Other biologists who visited to conduct studies there and exchange ideas with Beebe included myrmecologist Ted Schneirla, ethologist Konrad Lorenz, entomologist Lincoln Brower, ethologist Donald Griffin, and ornithologist David Snow. Service for William D. "Bill" Beebe, age 76, of Enid is Friday, September 11, 2020 at 10:00 am at Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of William can be made to the Lung Association of Saskatchewan. [220], Research at Simla formally began in 1950. Although some sources have described him as an only child,[3] he had a younger brother named John who died in infancy. [209], Although Beebe and his team enjoyed rewarding seasons at Rancho Grande in 1945 and 1946, they did not return there in 1947. [143] While A Monograph of the Pheasants had been a factual account of this expedition, Pheasant Jungles was a somewhat fictionalized account, in which Beebe altered some aspects of his experience to appeal to a wider audience. Guestbook (3) Follow story. In recognition of the research conducted on his expeditions, he was granted honorary doctorates from Tufts and Colgate University. [201] Beebe and his team used this station to study the ecology of the region and recorded how its inhabitants were affected by its cycle of wet and dry seasons. [107], Beebe's position in the Zoological Society changed in 1918: He was given the title of Honorary Curator of Birds and was made the director of the newly created Department of Tropical Research. A. Milne, who wrote of Half Mile Down "I don't know which I envy you most: all those moral and physical qualities which you have and I lack, or all that wonder of a new world. Beebe made extensive documentation of hoatzin behavior through field glasses, but their plans to capture one were foiled when they had to return home early due to Blair breaking her wrist. I saw it because I was looking down. [82] Beebe's observations of sexual dimorphism in pheasants during this expedition led him to become the first biologist to correctly understand the mechanism by which this aspect of sexual selection operates. [152], By this point in his life Beebe was developing a close friendship with the American romance novelist Elswyth Thane, who had met Beebe in 1925. To some men, the jungle is a tangled place of heat and danger. We are sad to announce that on November 26, 2021, at the age of 79, John William Coulter of Beebe, Arkansas passed away. In 1957, at the age of eighty, he was still capable of climbing slippery tree trunks to study bird nests. During this expedition, rather than focusing on either sea animals as he had at Nonsuch Island or on birds as he had earlier in his life, he attempted to document all aspects of the ecosystem. [147] These dives involved several technological innovations: a watertight brass box which could be used to house a camera for underwater photography, and a telephone which was incorporated into the diving helmet, allowing the diver to dictate observations to someone on the surface instead of having to take notes underwater. [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. [175] A second year-long interruption occurred in 1933, and was caused in part by a lack of funds due to the Great Depression. GROVELAND ~ William Wayne "Bill" Beebe, 76, of Groveland, passed away at 10:23 a.m. Sunday, September 20, 2020 at UnityPoint Health - Methodist in Peoria.He passed on what would have been his 52nd wedding anniversary. [114], In 1919, Osborn helped secure Beebe a new research station in Guiana to replace Kalacoon: Beebe was offered Kartabo Point, an outpost of a New York-based mining corporation. All about us, nature puts on the most thrilling adventure stories ever created, but we have to use our eyes. [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. He attended and graduated from Hennessey High School. Funeral Home Murdoch Funeral Homes & Cremation Service [37] Since Mexico was still largely unstable at this point, he and Blair traveled on horseback and lived mostly in tents, and both carried revolvers for self-protection. [13], In 1896, Beebe was accepted with advanced placement to Columbia University. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Although this evolutionary model is now taken for granted, in William Beebe's time it was a novel idea. Their expedition had obtained live or stuffed specimens of nearly all the pheasants he had sought, and also produced extensive notes about their behavior. Arrangements entrusted to Regina Funeral Home (306) 789-8850. [128], Despite his ongoing research in Guiana, what Beebe desired most was to return to the Galpagos, this time with a properly fitted-out scientific research vessel that possessed the ability to dredge animals from beneath the ocean. [151] He later went so far as to suggest that beachfront homes would someday contain their own underwater gardens, to be experienced with the help of diving helmets: If you wish to make a garden, choose some beautiful slope or reef grotto and with a hatchet chop and pry off coral boulders with waving purple sea-plumes and golden sea-fans and great particolored anemones. [265] The naming of a new species ordinarily requires obtaining and analyzing a type specimen, something which was obviously impossible from inside the Bathysphere. 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. He also spent time in trenches and accompanied a Canadian Indian platoon on a night raid. He was born in Chester, PA and attended Penncrest High School. [65] Beebe and Blair left for their expedition accompanied by Robert Bruce Horsfall, whose job would be to provide illustrations of the birds for the book that would hopefully result from this expedition. [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. [245], Beebe described his religious beliefs as a combination of Presbyterianism and Buddhism. For his contributions to science, he was elected a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. After Elswyth died in 1984, Jocelyn donated Beebe's papers to the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University's Firestone Library. [53][54], At this point in his life, Beebe was forming a close friendship with then-president Theodore Roosevelt, which would last until Roosevelt's death in 1919. [146], In 1927, Beebe went on an expedition to Haiti to document its marine life. [264] However, Beebe's prolific writing for a popular audience had a downside, in that other scientists of his time were reluctant to hold him in high accord because they regarded him as a popularizer. [105] Beebe subsequently wrote several articles describing his war experience for Scribner's Magazine and Atlantic Monthly. [263], A lingering controversy exists in ichthyology over the validity of the four species Beebe described based on visual descriptions only, which he had observed during his Bathysphere dives. [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. [45] In its finished form it represented a new kind of nature writing in that, although it presented technical information about bird biology and evolution, it did so in a way meant to be accessible to a general audience. Beebe returned to Rancho Grande in 1948, where he completed several technical papers about the migration patterns of birds and insects, as well as a comprehensive study of the area's ecology which he coauthored with Jocelyn Crane. [100], Beebe was eager to serve in World War I, but at 40 he was considered too old for regular service. [174], In 1931, Beebe and Barton's Bathysphere dives were interrupted for a year due to technical problems and uncooperative weather. [169] The Bathysphere was lowered into the ocean using a steel cable, and a second cable carried a phone line which the Bathysphere's occupants used to communicate with the surface, as well as an electrical cable for a searchlight to illuminate animals outside the Bathysphere. Since the purpose of Kalacoon station had been to study the jungle, the jungle's destruction left Beebe with no choice but to close the station and return with its supplies to New York. [3][22] As assistant curator, one of his principal jobs was to breed and rear the zoo's birds in order to sustain their population. [281] In 1974, Beebe's property was donated to the newly established Asa Wright Nature Center. [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. [271], Gerhard Heilmann discussed Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis at considerable length in his 1926 book The Origin of Birds. He was predeceased by : his parents, Charles Beebe and Ellen Beebe. [202] For these reasons, Beebe did not return to Caripito after his first season there. 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. [148] Within a hundred days, Beebe and his team had created a catalog of species inhabiting the area nearly as long as what had been assembled on the neighboring island of Puerto Rico in the past four hundred years. 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. [47] With his many writings about the dangers of environmental destruction, Beebe helped to raise public awareness about this topic. As birds collect about the luxuriant growths of a garden in the upper air, so hosts of fish will follow your labors, great crabs and starfish will creep thither, and now and then fairy jellyfish will throb past, superior in beauty to anything in the upper world, more delicate and graceful than any butterfly. [80], His expedition was completed after a total of 17 months, Beebe and Blair crossed the Pacific to San Francisco, then crossed the United States to return to their home in New York. [99] During his first season at Kalacoon in 1916, Beebe brought back 300 living specimens for the zoo. Contributions to science, he was born in Chester, PA and attended Penncrest School! Public awareness about this topic ] for these reasons, Beebe was accepted with advanced placement to University! 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