DR. ROBERT C. STEBBINS is a Professor Emeritus of Zoology and Curator Emeritus of Herpetology in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an artist, a musician, a husband; a father, a teacher, and a whole lot more. Perhaps he is best known among herpetologists for his influential Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians in the Peterson Field Guide series (Stebbins, 1966, 1985, 2003), with intricate details on natural history and the beauty of his hand-painted illustrations. There is, however, a lot more to Robert Stebbins, whose close friends and colleagues call him Bob, than many seem to know. Bob Stebbins was raised on a farm, grew up during The Great Depression, and received his college education during World War II. He studied biogeography before it was understood that the continents move, and he studied speciation during the time of the Evolutionary Synthesis. He established the herpetology program at the MVZ and retired at the dawn of the molecular era, before the computer technological revolution. For many decades he has struggled with unifying the ideals of evolutionary biology and religious beliefs, especially when concerned with the problem of overpopulation. In particular, he views education as essential in re-establishing the human connection with the natural world for our own physical sustainment Robert Cyril Stebbins (Fig. 1) was born 31 March 1915 in Chico, Butte County, California. His parents were Cyril A. and Louise B. Stebbins, and Bob was the oldest of seven children. Cyril Stebbins worked in farming and agriculture and was Supervisor of Agricultural Nature Study and Director of Rural School Extension at the Chico State Normal School for Teachers. The Stebbins family lived on a 15-acre ranch outside of Chico where they had small-scale prune and almond orchards, a horse, and a few sheep. When Bob was about five years old, the family moved to a second ranch, about 20 acres in size and closer to town. Here the main crops were almonds, peaches, and watermelons, and the family lived in a converted almond-shelling shed. When Bob was seven years old, the family moved to the San Francisco Bay area, although they continued to visit the ranch until Bob was around eight. In the Bay Area, Cyril Stebbins made educational films focusing on agriculture and social values for the Wyeth Corporation in San Francisco and worked in agriculture as an instructor at UC Berkeley with the geneticist and plant breeder Ernest B. Babcock, who developed the Babcock Peach. Cyril Stebbins was strongly interested in agriculture and wrote a book entitled The Principles of Agriculture for the School and Home Garden (1913). He also ran and organized a community garden project on the UC Berkeley campus where the local children grew fruits and vegetables to consume and sell for profit. This developed into a local community, participated in by the children, which had its own bank, mayor, and police. During World War I, Cyril was in the ‘‘U.S. Garden Army,’’ and he was in charge of establishing garden communities in schools in three western states. The battle cry throughout the U.S. at the time was ‘‘food will win the war,’’ and the Garden Army’s stationery was topped with rake and hoe. Bob’s parents were a strong positive influence on him; his career, focusing on biology and education, mirrors that of his father. His father was a biologist, an agriculturalist, and an evolutionist who also went to church. His mother was more religious, a fundamentalist Christian, and Bob attended church with his parents from an early age. The combination of these influences led to Bob’s interest in biology and the natural world, as well as concern for the well-being of humanity and the need for control of human population growth to prevent serious damage to the natural environment. Bob’s early experiences in biology include learning the parts of the flower from his father at around age five. His father also taught him how to identify birds, and one of his earliest treasured memories is seeing a Red-Shafted Flicker on the ranch in Chico. Bob once climbed a tree to get close to a sleeping Great Horned Owl and was reprimanded with
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Jan 1, 2016
Timothy K Perttula + 1
Open Access
