IN MEMORIAM: RALPH SIMON PALMER, 1914–2003

Abstract

Ralph Simon Palmer, best known as the author and editor of the Handbook of North American Birds (Yale University Press), died in Bangor, on 21 July 2003 after a brief illness. He was 89. Ralph was born in Richmond, on 13 June 1914, the eldest of four children born to Marion Holmes and George Luther Palmer. Seven years later the family moved to Brunswick, where Ralph attended high school, began collecting books, assisted the noted Bowdoin College ornithologist, Alfred 0. Gross, and joined the AOU in 1932. He was a life member of the AOU and became an Elective Member in 1947 and a Fellow in 1956. He graduated with high honors from the University of Maine in 1937; his honors thesis, Mammals of Maine, remains a standard reference. He received his doctorate from Cornell University in 1940 for his work on the nesting behavior of Common Terns. After working briefly at the State of New York Conservation Department, Ralph accepted a teaching position at Vassar College in 1942, where he remained an assistant professor until 1949. His academic career was interrupted by World War II; he served as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was in the third wave to land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. In August 1949, he was appointed as a senior scientist of the New York State Museum and State Science Service, where he worked for 27 years. Having retired to Ralph built his own house in Tenant's Harbor with the help of his sons, Keith and Douglas. Among several of the distinctive features of this house was the climate-controlled basement that housed his enormous personal library. Keenly interested in art, especially wildlife art, Ralph designed his living room to display a stunning painting of a red fox in winter by renowned Swedish artist Bruno Liljefors. In 1978, Ralph was appointed as research associate of the Smithsonian Institution, a post he held for five years, and in 1981 he was appointed as a faculty associate in zoology and forest resources at the University of Maine at Orono. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Maine at Machias in 1994. Ralph received the William Brewster Memorial Medal, the AOU's most prestigious award, for writing and editing the Handbook of North American Birds series, which was partially subsidized by the AOU. Ralph had hoped to emulate Arthur C. Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds, providing updated species accounts for all North American birds. However, the Handbook project was hindered by numerous delays; the fourth and fifth volumes, which covered raptors, appeared 26 years after the first volume. The AOU ultimately withdrew its support of the Handbook, in favor of The Birds of North America, which was completed in 2003. Disgruntled with that loss of financial support, Ralph dropped his AOU membership and returned his Brewster award, obviously distressed that he would not complete a project on which he had worked so very hard. He had already collected material for future volumes, at least through the owls, and now recognized that all that effort was in vain. Despite removing himself from the ornithological mainstream, he maintained many strong friendships and an active correspondence. He felt a particular bond with Allan R. Phillips; they had both taken part in the Allied landing in France in World War II and were both viewed as outsiders. Ralph did not suffer fools lightly, and he was unwilling to discuss matters in detail unless he felt that the receiver measured up to his considerable standards. Ralph was noted for the depth and breadth of his interests and knowledge-about birds, mammals, Native Americans, history, early exploration, naturalists, geology, plants, philosophy, and wildlife art. He was an accomplished photographer and painter. In short, he was a scholar and naturalist in the fullest