The Lives of Dillon Ripley: Natural Scientist, Wartime Spy, and Pioneering Leader of the Smithsonian Institution

274 Pages·2017·22.45 MB·English

by  Roger D. Stone

THE LIVE S OF

DILLON
Natural
Scientist,
RIPLEY
Wartime Spy,
& Pioneering
Leader of the
Smithsonian
Institution
ROGER D. STONE

The Lives of DiLLon RipLey

T h e L i v e s of
DILLON
R IPLEY
naTuRaL scienTisT, WaRTime spy,
anD pioneeRing LeaDeR of The
smiThsonian insTiTuTion
•
Roger D. Stone
FoReEDge
ForeEdge
An imprint of University Press of New England
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Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61168-656-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5126-0061-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available on request
Contents
Foreword, by Tom Lovejoy vii
Introduction xi
one
Growing Up Golden
1
TWo
Birds of Many Feathers
21
ThRee
Asian and Other Adventures
41
fouR
Pleasantly Busy in New Haven
63
five
Defining a New Culture
85
six
Displaying the Nation’s Art
119
seven
Media Ventures and Scholarly Triumph
137
eighT
Building Smithsonian U.
157
nine
Waves of Complaints
177
Ten
Science and Conservation
191
eLeven
Retiring the Crown
197
Acknowledgments 213
Chronology 217
Notes 219
Bibliography 235
Index 239
Illustrations follow page 102
Foreword
Tom Lovejoy
When I entered the Peabody Museum on the afternoon of
my first day as a Yale undergraduate, I was thrilled. I loved
natural history and knew the Peabody, but I had little inkling
of what it might lead to. That afternoon I met my freshman
adviser, Philip Humphrey, assistant curator of birds, who in
1965 would set me on my course in the Amazon. Within a
week I met the director, S. Dillon Ripley, and was volunteer-
ing in the Bird Division.
My initial reaction to the six- foot- four- inch gentleman was
one of awe, but he was also welcoming. His balding pate led
me to think he was considerably older than he was, but that
impression was dispelled the following week when I saw him
take the Peabody stairs two at a time.
This was an exciting time at the Peabody. The bird collec-
tions were being moved out of the Peabody’s tower into the
top floor of the brand- new Bingham wing. Hardly a month
later, as a very green freshman, I was able to attend the official
opening of the Bingham Oceanographic and Ornithological
Laboratory (O&O) presided over by the elegant director, with
an address by President Griswold and another by the wizard-
like G. Evelyn Hutchinson on the value of museums and the
puzzle of why there might be so many green pigeons.
As a sophomore I took Ripley and Humphrey’s ornithol-
ogy course, soaking up every morsel of knowledge imparted,
vii
viii Foreword
whether in class or in the field. I became one of a small cadre
of Peabody undergraduates encouraged by welcoming cura-
tors and always led by the sophisticated director. Ripley was
simultaneously a gentleman of the world and an inveterate
field naturalist who would vanish to exotic parts of the world
like New Guinea or India.
For many of us, he was an exemplar of someone who could
be at home in, and explore, nature but also be wise to the
human “ways of the world”— and always with a sense of fun
and whimsy, as when he and his close friend and scientific
colleague, Sálim Ali, availed themselves of an opportunity to
taste elephant milk (their report: it tasted chalky) or when in
my senior year he arranged for a belly dancer to perform at
the black tie dinner in the Peabody Great Hall celebrating the
King Tut’s Treasures exhibition.
With the Peabody’s and Ripley’s encouragement I did what
was then unheard of and took a year off (between junior and
senior years) to go on a Peabody expedition to Nubia when the
Aswan Dam was under construction. By the time I returned
my fate was sealed: I was to be a field biologist. But I also soon
heard a rumor that Ripley would be leaving Yale to become
the next secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. How ex-
citing it was to personally know the new secretary — but that
was another world.
Ripley had an incredible memory for just about everything.
For example, I learned from him that there is a tattoo museum
in Japan. Mary Ripley, his amazing wife, who shared his pas-
sion for the natural world, once said that being married to him
was like being married to an encyclopedia. That memory also
applied to people: he did not forget friends, nor did he forget
their interests and talents.