During these trips, Beebe also developed an interest in dredging, the practice of using nets to haul up animals that lived deep underwater and attempting to study them before they died or disintegrated. [184], Likely, Beebe became romantically involved with Hollister during his work at Nonsuch Island. [169] The record set by the deepest of these, to a depth of 3,028 feet (923m) on August 15, 1934, lasted until it was broken by Barton in 1949. He was born in Westchester, Pennsylvania and moved to central Florida in the early. [208] His immobility also presented him with the opportunity to spend hours at a time observing a pair of bat falcons through binoculars, documenting the behavior of their two chicks and every prey item fed to them by their parents. Smith Family Funeral Home obituaries and Death Notices for the Little Rock, AR area. The same year, he was also elected a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. [17] Beebe never applied to receive a degree from Columbia,[18] although years later he was granted honorary doctorates from both Tufts and Colgate University. Please accept Echovita's sincere condolences. [23] Beebe placed much importance on the birds being given as much space as possible, and proposed the building of a "flying cage" the size of a football field. [148] Within a hundred days, Beebe and his team had created a catalog of species inhabiting the area nearly as long as what had been assembled on the neighboring island of Puerto Rico in the past four hundred years. [28] He then went on to serve as an honorary curator from 1919 to 1962. In 1901, Beebe returned to Nova Scotia on his first expedition for the zoo, intending to collect marine animals by searching tide pools and with additional dredging. "[87] Beebe made very little effort to contest the divorce and did not appear in court to offer any testimony. He was born in. [100], Beebe was eager to serve in World War I, but at 40 he was considered too old for regular service. [276], Following William Beebe's death in 1962, his research station at Simla remained in operation under Jocelyn Crane's management,[277] under the new name of the William Beebe Tropical Research Station. [247] He was highly critical of efforts to use science to justify political ideologies, such as socialism[248] or the belief that women were inferior to men. He was born on February 26, 1926 to Gerald and Nora (Curtice) Beebe in Fremont, Michigan. [281] In 1974, Beebe's property was donated to the newly established Asa Wright Nature Center. Other biologists who visited to conduct studies there and exchange ideas with Beebe included myrmecologist Ted Schneirla, ethologist Konrad Lorenz, entomologist Lincoln Brower, ethologist Donald Griffin, and ornithologist David Snow. [72], The expedition's next destination was Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. [162] The New York Times carried articles describing Beebe's plans, which called for a diving bell with the shape of a cylinder. [31][87] Although newspapers at the time reported Blair's accusations uncritically, with headlines such as "Naturalist was cruel",[88] modern biographers consider it more likely that Blair resorted to hyperbole to make a divorce case. Elswyth explained in a magazine interview that she was uncomfortable on Beebe's expeditions, so the two of them had agreed that they would keep their careers separate from their private lives. William D Beebe. [111][112] Volume II of the monograph was published in 1921, and volumes III and IV were published in 1922. He is also remembered for several theories he proposed about avian evolution which are now regarded as having been ahead of their time, particularly his 1915 hypothesis that the evolution of bird flight passed through a four-winged or "Tetrapteryx" stage, which has been supported by the 2003 discovery of Microraptor gui. [229] Snow became a regular visitor to Simla,[230] and in return Beebe provided financial assistance for some of Snow's own research. William Thomas Beebe, who retired last year as board chairman of Delta Air Lines, died of a heart attack Saturday after surgery at Doctors Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. [213] He was by this point the only remaining member of the zoo's original staff,[214] and had produced more scholarly papers and publicity than any other employee. July 6, 1958 - July 6, 2022 (64 years old) Silver Springs, Florida William W. Beebe Obituary Here is William W. Beebe's obituary. [99] During his first season at Kalacoon in 1916, Beebe brought back 300 living specimens for the zoo. [191] Beebe described his two expeditions onboard the Zaca in his books Zaca Venture and The Book of Bays, in which he emphasized his concern for threatened habitats and his dismay at human destruction. [66], After crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the RMS Lusitania to London, where they gathered the supplies they would need for their expedition, Beebe and his team traveled across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon, where they began their task of documenting the native wildfowl. A. Milne, who wrote of Half Mile Down "I don't know which I envy you most: all those moral and physical qualities which you have and I lack, or all that wonder of a new world. [101] During a second trip to Kalacoon while his wrist healed, Beebe was further devastated to discover that due to wartime demand for rubber, the entire jungle surrounding the house had been clear-cut to make room for rubber trees. [117][118], Beebe was eager to undertake an expedition to the Galpagos Islands, intending to obtain more detailed data in support of evolution than Charles Darwin had been able to collect in his earlier visit. Roosevelt subsequently wrote an article about the station for Scribner's Magazine, which helped to build public support for the station.[98]. Beebe and his team began work there in 1945, staying as guests of the Venezuelan government. [123] Beebe also discovered a previously unknown bay on Genovesa Island (also known as Tower Island) in the Galpagos, which he named Darwin Bay, and documented the diversity of animal life that inhabited it. [255] Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. recounts one incident in which Beebe turned down a scientist who wished to work with him when the scientist described boredom with his current duties as one of his reasons for requesting this. [279] By 1971, the station had fallen into disuse and was declared closed. [120] Passing through the Sargasso Sea on the way to the Galpagos, Beebe was fascinated by the diversity of life that could be found in the sargassum weed floating on the surface and spent several days scooping the weed from the water to examine the creatures that lived in it. [266] Some of Beebe's critics claimed that these fish were illusions resulting from condensation on the Bathysphere's window, or even that Beebe willfully made them up, although the latter would have been strongly at odds with Beebe's reputation as an honest and rigorous scientist. [205] Unlike Beebe's other tropical research stations, which had been located in lowland regions, Rancho Grande was located on a mountainside in what Beebe described as "the ultimate cloud jungle". Beebe renamed the estate Simla, after the hill in India that featured in Rudyard Kipling's writings. [210] Finally, when the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'tat installed Marcos Prez Jimnez as Venezuela's dictator, Beebe decided that he could no longer continue to work in Venezuela. The palace's construction had been left unfinished after Gmez's death, and since then the building's vast corridors and ballrooms had become the home of jaguars, tapirs and sloths. [64] Hornaday appointed Crandall as the zoo's acting curator of birds, giving him the duty of caring for its birds in Beebe's absence. [44] This book was a reworking of a manuscript that Beebe had submitted to Henry Holt in 1902, but which Holt had asked him to expand into a major work on birds. [273], In 2003, Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis was supported by the discovery of Microraptor gui, a small feathered dinosaur which possessed asymmetrical flight feathers on both its front and hind limbs. Marguerite. [124] During the return to New York from this expedition, Beebe continued to dredge animals from the sea, using a pair of new devices he had devised to assist himself with this: a "pulpit", an iron cage affixed to the bow of the ship that enabled its occupant to examine the surface of the sea more closely; and a "boom walk", a 30-foot (9.1m) boom jutting from the side of the ship from which he suspended himself. [135] In the Pacific, they encountered a strange boundary between two currents of very different temperatures, containing a vast diversity of life on the border between the two. [209], Although Beebe and his team enjoyed rewarding seasons at Rancho Grande in 1945 and 1946, they did not return there in 1947. Services for William "Bill" D. Beebe, age 76, of Enid, died, Sept. 4, 2020, are pending with Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home. She was 82. [271], Gerhard Heilmann discussed Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis at considerable length in his 1926 book The Origin of Birds. [227], During Beebe's later years, Simla was an important gathering point for researchers in many other areas of biology. Charles William Beebe was born in Brooklyn, New York, son of the newspaper executive Charles Beebe. We would not have been human if we had refused to recognize omens. Although this evolutionary model is now taken for granted, in William Beebe's time it was a novel idea. [81] Some of these pheasants, such as Sclater's impeyan or Himalayan monal, had never before been seen in the wild by Americans or Europeans. [159], With the financial help of his sponsors, Beebe planned to use his new research station on Nonsuch Island to conduct a thorough study of an 8-mile (13km) square area of ocean, documenting every living thing they could find from the surface to a depth of 2 miles (3.2km). [63] However, the zoo ultimately decided in Kuser's favor, partly because the scientific papers produced by Beebe's trip to Guiana had been beneficial to the zoo's reputation. [126], In 1924, Beebe went on another expedition to his Guiana research station of Kartabo, intending to continue the detailed documentation of the tropical ecosystem that he had begun at Kalacoon. View Obituary & Service Information Beebe was reluctant to accept speaking engagements because of the effect this had on his voice, although he continued to give lectures on occasion with Jocelyn's help. Barton's design called for a spherical vessel, which was the strongest possible shape for resisting high pressure. Beebe's second book, The Bird, Its Form and Function, was published in 1906. [80], His expedition was completed after a total of 17 months, Beebe and Blair crossed the Pacific to San Francisco, then crossed the United States to return to their home in New York. [188] With the help of Beebe's friend the physician Henry Lloyd, Beebe conducted an expedition in the West Indies examining the stomach contents of tuna, which uncovered previously unknown larval forms of several species of fish. According to the funeral home, the following services. [270], Along with his analysis of pheasant phylogeny and his studies of life in the Galpagos Islands, Beebe regarded one of his most important contributions to the field of evolutionary biology to be his hypothesis that the ancestors of birds passed through what he referred to as a Tetrapteryx stage, with wings on both their front and hind limbs. [62] Hornaday strongly objected to this proposal, describing Kuser as an "evil genius" who was attempting to steal Beebe away from his duties at the zoo. "[258] Due to Beebe's renewed emphasis on field research at a time when laboratory studies were becoming the dominant trend in biology, more recent field researchers such as Jane Goodall and George Schaller are also sometimes considered his intellectual descendants. [89] Despite her assistance during the pheasant expedition, Beebe excised any mention of her from the monograph he was preparing based on the data gathered during it. The location that she found, known as Rancho Grande, had initially been intended as a palace for Venezuela's dictator Juan Vicente Gmez in the Henri Pittier National Park. Beebe described his idea in a 1915 paper published in Zoologica, titled "A Tetrapteryx Stage in the Ancestry of Birds". This study yielded a collection of 3,776 fish of 136 species, many of them also new to science. [252] However, Hornaday never publicly expressed his disagreements with Beebe and did not hesitate to defend Beebe's work when others criticized it.[253]. Beebe's study of these currents, and their effect on the climate of South America, is the earliest known study of the phenomenon known as El Nio. I saw them because I was looking up. Family and friends are welcome to send flowersor leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. American ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, and explorer (18771962), For the U.S. Army officer and Medal of Honor recipient, see, Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal, American Association for the Advancement of Science, "The Ninth Expedition of the Zoological Society", "Feathers and 'feather-like' integumentary structures in Liaoning birds and dinosaurs", Department of Tropical Research collections finding aids, Article (free access) on William Beebe's contributions to Deep-Sea Biology, Cleaning and disinfection of personal diving equipment, Swimming at the 1900 Summer Olympics Men's underwater swimming, Confdration Mondiale des Activits Subaquatiques, Fdration Franaise d'tudes et de Sports Sous-Marins, Comando Raggruppamento Subacquei e Incursori Teseo Tesei, Namibian Marine Corps Operational Diving Unit, US Marine Corps Reconnaissance Battalions, Underwater Offence (Turkish Armed Forces), International Marine Contractors Association, Federacin Espaola de Actividades Subacuticas, International Association for Handicapped Divers, Environmental impact of recreational diving, Use of breathing equipment in an underwater environment, Failure of diving equipment other than breathing apparatus, Testing and inspection of diving cylinders, Association of Diving Contractors International, List of signs and symptoms of diving disorders, European Underwater and Baromedical Society, National Board of Diving and Hyperbaric Medical Technology, Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory, Royal Australian Navy School of Underwater Medicine, South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society, Southern African Underwater and Hyperbaric Medical Association, United States Navy Experimental Diving Unit, List of legislation regulating underwater diving, Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, History of decompression research and development, Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival, Bennett and Elliott's physiology and medicine of diving, Code of Practice for Scientific Diving (UNESCO), IMCA Code of Practice for Offshore Diving, ISO 24801 Recreational diving services Requirements for the training of recreational scuba divers, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, List of Divers Alert Network publications, International Diving Regulators and Certifiers Forum, List of diver certification organizations, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, World Recreational Scuba Training Council, Commercial diver registration in South Africa, American Canadian Underwater Certifications, Association nationale des moniteurs de plonge, International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers, International Diving Educators Association, National Association of Underwater Instructors, Professional Association of Diving Instructors, Professional Diving Instructors Corporation, Rebreather Association of International Divers, National Speleological Society#Cave Diving Group, United States Marine Corps Combatant Diver Course, South African Underwater Sports Federation, 14th CMAS Underwater Photography World Championship, Underwater Orienteering World Championships, Physiological response to water immersion, International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office, Submarine Escape and Rescue system (Royal Swedish Navy), Russian deep submergence rescue vehicle AS-28, Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System, Submarine Escape Training Facility (Australia), Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia, Diving Equipment and Marketing Association, Finger Lakes Underwater Preserve Association, Society for Underwater Historical Research, Underwater Archaeology Branch, Naval History & Heritage Command, Neutral buoyancy simulation as a training aid, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Beebe&oldid=1133992320, Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. [14] While attending university, Beebe frequently split his time between the university and the American Museum of Natural history, many of whose researchers were also professors at Columbia. Beebe admired Roosevelt's skill as a field naturalist as well as his advocacy of conservation, and Roosevelt's fame made his support highly valuable in Beebe's scientific endeavors. [139], While anchored off the Galpagos, Beebe and his crew noticed volcanic activity on Albemarle Island, and set out to investigate it. Beebe and Barton made a deal: Barton would pay for the sphere and all of the other equipment to go with it. Beebe had high expectations of the people working under him on all of his expeditions,[254] although he never revealed the exact characteristics that he looked for in potential employees. [61], In December 1909, businessman and philanthropist Anthony R. Kuser proposed to the zoo that Beebe be allowed to go on a voyage around the world to document the world's pheasants, which would be financed by Kuser. [95], In 1916, Beebe traveled to Georgetown in pursuit of his earlier goal of establishing a permanent field research station in Guiana. All a man has to do is see. GROVELAND ~ William Wayne "Bill" Beebe, 76, of Groveland, passed away at 10:23 a.m. Sunday, September 20, 2020 at UnityPoint Health - Methodist in Peoria.He passed on what would have been his 52nd wedding anniversary. Visitors who recognized these characters as Milne's creations were greeted by Beebe with enthusiasm, while those who did not recognize them were just endured by Beebe until they left. Beebe had frequently worried that Elswyth would write a biography of him after his death. [136], Anchoring near Darwin Bay, Beebe made his first attempt at studying sea animals in their native environment by descending into the ocean in a diving helmet. [91], By the end of 1914, Beebe's pheasant monograph was essentially complete in the manuscript. [77][78], The last portion of Beebe's journey took him to China, from which they made an unplanned visit to Japan to escape a riot as well as a surge of bubonic plague. The last chapter was written by Blair and was an explanation of how to plan and execute a vacation in the wilderness. Obituary of William C. Beebe. [249] Beebe also disapproved of the eugenic ideas advocated by many biologists in the early 20th century, including some of his contemporaries at the zoo, although this was largely out of fear that these ideas would alienate friends of the zoo and cause divisions among its staff. [114], In 1919, Osborn helped secure Beebe a new research station in Guiana to replace Kalacoon: Beebe was offered Kartabo Point, an outpost of a New York-based mining corporation. He was predeceased by : his parents, Charles Beebe and Ellen Beebe. [127] Beebe continued to battle depression during this trip to Kartabo, both over his earlier loss of Blair, and over the death of his mother Nettie, who had died shortly before the beginning of the expedition. [268] One possibility is that although these animals indeed exist, so much remains to be discovered about life in the deep ocean that these animals have yet to be seen by anyone other than him. Find an obituary, get service details, leave condolence messages or send flowers or gifts in memory of a loved one. Back 300 living specimens for the zoo was written By Blair and was declared.... Monograph was essentially complete in the wilderness in many other areas of biology flowersor leave their condolences this! [ 28 ] he then went on to serve as an honorary curator from 1919 to 1962 from to... Family Funeral Home, the following services `` [ 87 ] Beebe very... By Blair and was an explanation of how to plan and execute a vacation in the wilderness staying. 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