Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee

Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee (born January 4, 1901 in Rome , Italy , † April 24, 1984 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) was an American ornithologist of Swiss origin. He comes from the Lucerne patrician family Meyer von Schauensee.

Life

Meyer de Schauensee was born in Rome as the son of the Swiss Baron Frederick Meyer de Schauensee and his American wife Matilda Toland. He spent part of his childhood at Schloss Schauensee , his father's country estate near Lucerne . He attended schools in Rome and Florence before he and his mother emigrated to the United States in 1913. In New York he graduated from the Hoosac School. Even as a young man, Meyer de Schauensee showed great interest in bird watching, and so he maintained an aviary with exotic birds at his mother's residence in Wynnewood near Philadelphia . In the 1920s he attended the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where he made the acquaintance of ornithologist James Bond . In the following years, Bond and Meyer de Schauensee often worked together on studies of the neotropical avifauna and wrote the first scientific descriptions of taxa such as the southern helmhokko ( Pauxi unicornis ) and the tolima dove ( Leptotila conoveri ). From 1926 Meyer de Schauensee collected live animals and hides (especially from snakes, fish and birds) in Colombia , Peru , Guatemala , Bolivia , Brazil , Kenya , southern Africa, China , Burma , Thailand and Indonesia . From 1935 he financed expeditions that went to the South Pacific, among other places. Within 50 years he was able to increase the museum inventory of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia from 80,000 to over 170,000 bellows. Meyer de Schauensee wrote six books. Between 1948 and 1952 appeared "The Birds of the Republic of Colombia", 1964 he published "The Birds of Colombia" and 1966 "The Species of Birds of South America". In 1970 "A Guide to the Birds of South America" ​​was published, which is considered to be his most important book in ornithological circles. In 1978 "A Guide to the Birds" of Venezuela was published and two weeks before his death in 1984 his last work "The Birds of China" was published. In addition, he translated Tommaso Salvadori's standard work "Birds of Borneo" into English.

Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee had two daughters with his wife Williamina W. Wentz.

Dedication names

The following taxa are named after Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee: Amphiesma deschauenseei , Eunectes deschauenseei , Hyphessobrycon schauenseei , Ortalis vetula deschauenseei , Rallus limicola meyerdeschauenseei and Tangara meyerdeschauenseei .

Works (selection)

• Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee: A Guide To The Birds Of South America , Museum of Natural History; Reprint edition, 1970; ISBN 978-0870980275
• Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee, William H. Phelps , Guy Tudor : A Guide to the Birds of Venezuela. Princeton University Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0691082059 , pp. 153f.
• Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee: The Birds of China , Oxford University Press, 1984; ISBN 978-0198586029

literature

• Sidney Dillon Ripley: In Memoriam Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee . In: The Auk . tape 103 , no. 1 , January 1986, pp. 204–206 ( sora.unm.edu [PDF; 214 kB ]).
• Rodolphe Meyer De Schauensee. Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: Biography (subscription required), accessed May 5, 2020