IN MEMORIAM

Thomas R. Howell

Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Emeritus

Los Angeles

1924—2004

Thomas R. Howell died on 14 December 2004, at the age of 80 in North Chatham, Massachusetts.

 

He was a professional ornithologist for most of his life. He taught and directed research in ornithology at UCLA for many years, where he was also director of the Donald R. Dickey bird collection and chairman of the Lida Scott Brown Fund for Ornithological Education, which for many years gave money to the UCLA Biomedical Library to build up its magnificent collection of bird books. Tom Howell also established the Lida Scott Brown Library for Ornithology in the UCLA Biology Department. Besides ornithology he also taught vertebrate biology for many years. He served a term as chair of the Biology Department.

 

Tom Howell’s service to ornithology was superlative. He joined the American Ornithologists’ Union, the leading professional ornithology society of the country, in 1948, and was elected a Fellow in 1959. For 1982-1984 he was elected and served as president of this society, presiding in 1983 at the centennial meeting of the AOU in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History where the society was founded.

 

Tom Howell also served as president of the Cooper Ornithological Society, the leading ornithology society of the Western United States, from 1964 to 1967. Over the years he served this society in a great many ways for which he was elected an Honorary Members in 1968.

 

For many years, Tom Howell served on the most important committee of the AOU, the Committee on Classification and Nomenclature that is charged with revising the standard checklist of North American birds, and decides the correct scientific names of North American birds. In 1983 this committee published the sixth edition of this checklist, which was first published 100 years earlier. This revised edition for the first time included not only species of birds found north of the Mexican border, but also all the birds of Mexico and Central America. Tom Howell continued to serve on this committee in succeeding years, helping to determine the accepted scientific names of North American birds.

 

As part of his research program Tom Howell over some years visited Nicaragua where he could study the geographical transition between North American and South American birds in this key geography locality.

 

Another of his special research interests was in the adaptations of birds to extreme environments. He visited the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, one of the driest deserts of the world where in some parts no rain has ever been recorded. Here, Tom Howell studied how the Gray Gull (Larus modestus) manages to breed in the desert safe from predators. He found that chicks were fed primarily at night by parents coming inland from the coast.

 

Tom Howell also ranged further afield with a field study in southwest Ethiopia of the nesting adaptations on riverine islands of the Egyptian Plover (Plavianus aegyptius). He discovered the parents would bury their eggs and young in the hot dry sand for safety from predators, but keep them cool by bringing water to the nest in their breast feathers.

 

For his research contributions, in 1985 Tom Howell was awarded the Elliott Coues award of the AOU, one of the two highest awards of this international society.

 

Tom Howell was also active in other ways in ornithology on the international stage. He regularly attended the International Ornithological Congress held every four years. For example, in the first of these meetings held in the Soviet Union in 1982, Howell was invited to present the results of his research on Russian TV. As a service to UCLA Extension, Tom led a trip to the Galapagos Islands as naturalist guide. He also participated as ornithologist in one of Jacques Cousteau’s trips to Baja California. The National Geographic magazine published Tom Howell’s observations of the Fairy Tern (Gygas alba) and its nesting behavior in the south Pacific.

 

After retiring, Tom Howell continued to indulge his love of birds by traveling over the world almost non-stop with his wife Eleanor to see as many birds as he could in their natural habitat. All this although he was then suffering from diabetes.

 

Tom Howell was a warm and friendly person with a delightful sense of humor and he was also a person of absolute integrity.

 

Tom Howell’s first wife died early, leaving him with a young son, Tom Jr. Later in life he married again and by his second wife had two daughters to whom he was devoted. This marriage did not last and eventually he married Eleanor Damon who shared his interests in birds and travel.

 

Nicholas E. Collias