IN MEMORIAM: LAWRENCE KILHAM, 1910–2000

Abstract

Lawrence Kilham died at his home in Lyme, New Hampshire, on 21 September 2000. Born 10 August 1910 in Brookline, Massachusetts, Lawrence grew up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in history and literature in 1932, earned a master's degree in biology from Harvard in 1935, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1940. While serving as an intern in Cleveland, Ohio, he met his wife, Jane, a fellow intern. Both went to England early in World War II, and Lawrence served in field hospitals under General George Patton. After leaving the Army in 1945, Lawrence returned to graduate school doing virology research and teaching epidemiology. From 1949 to 1960, he worked as a research virologist. He joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School in 1961, where he remained until he retired in 1978. Lawrence Kilham was widely recognized for his research with viruses and infectious diseases, publishing nearly 150 articles and discovering a new group of viruses with single-stranded DNA. At first his interest in birds was recreational, stemming from a lifelong quest for solitude and nature that led him to identify with Henry David Thoreau and to seek wild places. After his marriage, his wife Jane shared his quests and often illustrated his articles and books; to better learn from nature, they went their own ways in the field, coming back together every few hours to share their observations. By the early 1950s, Lawrence was serious about birds, joining both the AOU and the Wilson Ornithological Society in 1952. It was while doing viral research in Uganda in 1954-1955, that he developed a research interest in bird behavior. From that point on, his work with the behavior of birds and mammals, an avocation, became a passion that led to more than 90 publications in the ornithological and behavioral literature. I suspect that for him, the joy of birds relieved the pressures of teaching and laboratory work. For his ornithological contributions, he was made an Elective Member of the AOU in 1962, and a Fellow in 1974. Truly Lawrence Kilham successfully lived two outstanding careers in science! In addition to his journal articles, he published four books relating to his studies of nature: Never Enough of Nature (1977, Droll Yankees Inc., Foster, Rhode Island); On Watching Birds (1979, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, Chelsea, Vermont), reissued as A Naturalist's Field Guide (1981, Stackpole Books, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania); Life History Studies of Woodpeckers of Eastern North America (1983, Publications of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, no. 20); and The American Crow and the Common Raven (1989, Texas A & M University Press, College Station, Texas). For On Watching Birds he was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing in 1988. Although he studied a great diversity of birds, Lawrence Kilham is best known for his work with woodpeckers. Indeed, it is difficult to find a major study on the behavioral ecology of woodpeckers that was not influenced by Kilham's work. Much ornithological research today is problem oriented; some remain species oriented; his work was often individual oriented! His research was not couched in systematic