Collections-based research at Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 83-113

  Sunderland, Mary E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Alden Holmes Miller; Berkeley; Collections; Collections based research; Evolution; Fieldwork; Museum; Museum of Vertebrate Zoology; Natural history; Ornithology

Indexed keywords

EID: 84860335147     PISSN: 19391811     EISSN: 1939182X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2012.42.2.83     Document Type: Review

References (142)

1. See "MVZ-What We Do, And Why," http://mvz.berkeley.edu/General- Information.html (last accessed 28 Feb. 2012).
2. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Thoughts in Things: Modernity, History, and North American Museums," Isis 96(2005):586-601, on 586-87.
3. For an overview of the history of natural history work, see Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and Emma C. Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
4. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Museums on Campus: A Tradition of Inquiry and Teaching," in The American Development of Biology, ed. Ronald Rainger, Keith Benson, and Jane Maienschein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 15-48;
5. Karen Rader and Victoria Cain, "From Natural History to Science: Display and the Transformation of American Museums of Science and Nature," Museum and Society 6, no. 2(2008):152-71, on 152-53.
6. Barbara R. Stein, On Her Own Terms: Annie Montague Alexander and the Rise of Science in the American West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 158.
7. For twentieth-century change in the life sciences see Garland Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975);
8. Jane Maienschein, Ronald Rainger, and Keith Benson, "Special Section on American Morphology at the Turn of the Century-Introduction: Were American Morphologists in Revolt?" JHB 14(1981):83-87;
9. Ronald Rainger, Keith Benson, and Jane Maienschein, The American Development of Biology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). For evidence of collections being scrutinized see C. Kerr to A. H. Miller, 9 Dec. 1953, M P, Box 5, Folder Collections Committee.
10. David Wake, "MVZ Annual Report," 1971-72, 1973-74, 1986-87, 1987-88, and 1988-89, all in the MVZ Reprint Room, Drawer Annual Reports.
11. Kohlstedt, "Thoughts in Things" (ref. 2), 587.
12. For work on collecting practices see David Elliston Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (London: A. Lane, 1976);
13. Anne Larson, "Equipment for the Field," in Jardine, Secord, and Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History (ref. 2);
14. Robert E. Kohler, All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006);
15. Robert Kohler, "Finders, Keepers: Collecting Sciences and Collecting Practice," History of Science 45(2007):428-54.
16. For example, see James R. Griesemer, "Modeling in the Museum: On the Role of Remnant Models in the Work of Joseph Grinnell," Biology and Philosophy 5(1990):3-36;
17. James R. Griesemer, "Material Models in Biology," in PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, vol. 2 (1990), ed. A. Fine, M. Forbes, and L. Wessels (East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association), 79-93;
18. James R. Griesemer, "Niche: Historical Perspectives," in Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth A. Lloyd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 231-40;
19. James R. Griesemer and Elihu M. Gerson, "Collaboration in the MVZ," JHB 26(1993):185-204;
20. Elihu Gerson, "The American System of Research: Evolutionary Biology, 1890-1950" (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998);
21. Lynne K. Nyhart, Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009);
22. Mary P. Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
23. Ayelet Shavit and James Griesemer, "There and Back Again, or the Problem of Locality in Biodiversity Surveys," Philosophy of Science 76(2009):273-94;
24. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's MVZ, 1907-1939," Social Studies of Science 19(1989):387-420;
25. John V. Pickstone, "Museological Science? The Place of the Analytical/Comparative in Nineteenth-Century Science, Technology and Medicine," History of Science 32(1994):111-38.
26. For biographies of Miller, see John Davis, "In Memoriam: Alden Holmes Miller," Auk 84(1967):192-202;
27. and Ernst Mayr, "Alden Holmes Miller," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 43(1973):177-214.
28. For example, Juan Francisco Ilerbaig, "Pride in Place: Fieldwork, Geography, and American Field Zoology, 1850-1920" (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2002), 27;
29. Robert E. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
30. For a review of Kohler that points out the similarities between the laboratory-field and naturalist-experimentalist distinctions see Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, "Fielding Biology," Science 299(2003):1665-66.
31. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes (ref. 9);
32. Kohler, All Creatures (ref. 6).
33. Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Are Naturalists Old-Fashioned?" American Naturalist 100(1966):541-50, on 542.
34. For a critique of the "border biology" category see Smocovitis, "Fielding Biology" (ref. 9).
35. Bruno J. Strasser, "Collection, Comparing, and Computing Sequences: The Making of Margaret O. Dayhoff's Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure, 1954-1965," JHB 43, no. 4(2010):623-60;
36. Bruno J. Strasser, "Laboratories, Museums, and the Comparative Perspective: Alan A. Boyden's Quest for Objectivity in Seriological Taxonomy, 1924-1962," HSNS 40, no. 2(2010):149-82;
37. Joel B. Hagen, "Experimentalists and Naturalists in 20th-Century Botany-Experimental Taxonomy, 1920-1950," JHB 17, no. 2(1984):249-70;
38. and Joel B. Hagen, "Naturalists, Molecular Biology, and the Challenge of Molecular Evolution," JHB 32(1999):321-41;
39. Erika Lorraine Milam, "The Experimental Animal from the Naturalist's Point of View," in Descended From Darwin: Insights into the History of Evolutionary Studies, 1900-1970, ed. Joe Cain and Michael Ruse (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2009), 157-78;
40. Robert Kohler, "Practice and Place in Twentieth-Century Field Biology: A Comment," JHB (2011), http://www.springerlink.com/content/ n1v05x73r9v73767 (last accessed 27 Feb. 2012);
41. Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, "The "Plant Drosophila": E. B. Babcock, the Genus Crepis, and the Evolution of a Genetics Research Program at Berkeley, 1915-1947," HSNS 39, no. 3(2009):300-55.
42. Griesemer, "Modeling in the Museum";
43. Griesemer, "Material Models";
44. and Gerson, "American System of Research" all in (ref. 7).
45. Strasser, "Collection, Comparing, and Computing";
46. Strasser, "Laboratories, Museums";
47. Hagen, "Experimentalists and Naturalists";
48. Hagen, "Naturalists, Molecular Biology";
49. Milam, "Experimental Animal";
50. Smocovitis, "'Plant Drosophila'," all in (ref. 13).
51. Kristin Johnson, "Natural History as Stamp Collecting: A Brief History," Archives of Natural History 34(2007):244-58.
52. Alden Miller, "The Curator as Research Worker," Curator 6(1963):282-86.
53. Mary E. Sunderland, "Teaching Natural History at the MVZ," British Journal for the History of Science (2011), http://journals.cambridge. org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=8447486&jid=BJH&volumeId= -1&issueId=-1&aid=8447484 (last accessed 27 Feb. 2012).
54. For more on Joseph Grinnell and the MVZ, see Raymond E. Hall, "Joseph Grinnell (1877 to 1939)," Journal of Mammalogy 20(1939):400-17;
55. Hilda Wood Grinnell, "Joseph Grinnell: 1877-1939," Condor 42(1940):3-34;
56. Ilerbaig, "Pride in Place" (ref. 9);
57. Juan Francisco Ilerbaig, "The View-Point of a Naturalist: American Field Zoologists and the Evolutionary Synthesis, 1900-1945," in Cain and Ruse, eds., Descended From Darwin (ref. 13), 23-48;
58. Alden Miller, "Joseph Grinnell," Systematic Zoology 13(1964):235-42;
59. Greisemer and Gerson, "Collaboration in the MVZ" (ref. 7);
60. Stein, On Her Own Terms (ref. 3).
61. Joseph Grinnell, "The Origin and Distribution of the Chestnut-Backed Chickadee," Auk 21(1904):364-82.
62. Joseph Grinnell, "Barriers to Distribution as Regards Birds and Mammals," American Naturalist 48(1914):248-54
63. as reprinted in Joseph Grinnell, Joseph Grinnell's Philosophy of Nature: Selected Writings of a Western Naturalist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943).
64. Joseph Grinnell, MVZ Annual Report, 1 Jul. 1930, MVZC, Folder Annual Reports; Clinton Hart Merriam, "The Geographic Distribution of Life in North America: With Special Reference to the Mammalia," Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 7(1892):1-64.
65. Merriam, "Geographic Distribution" (ref. 24);
66. Rexford F. Daubenmire, "Merriam's Life Zones of North America," Quarterly Review of Biology 13, no. 3(1938):327-32.
67. For an analysis of Merriam's approach see Jane Maienschein, "Pattern and Process in Early Studies of Arizona's San Francisco Peaks," Bio Science 44(1994):479-85.
68. Joseph Grinnell, "Some Life-Zone Indicators for California," 6 Apr. 1937, Joseph and Hilda Grinnell Papers, The Bancroft Library, UCB, Box 9, Folder 8;
69. Joseph Grinnell and Harvey Monroe Hall, "Life Zone Indicators in California," Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 9, no. 2(1919):37-67.
70. Richard Eakin, "Alden Miller, an Experimentalist," 10 Dec. 1965, MO.
71. Although his father denied that he led his son to pursue ornithology, his effect was undeniably powerful. Mayr suspected that Miller's "hero worship" of his father was one of his main scientific influences. Mayr, "Alden Holmes Miller" (ref. 8); J. Davis to E. Mayr, 14 Feb. 1966, MO. Miller's legendary ability to recognize birdcalls was aided by his musical aptitude; he partially financed his graduate education as a soloist (singer) in the First Congregational Church of Oakland (L. Miller to E. Mayr, 16 Mar. 1966, MO).
72. Virginia was "an assistant to Alden in everything he did." She "turned into a mammal preparator" and also helped with "bird skinning and making of skeletons." In fact, she helped with most matters. Her work was formally acknowledged in the one paper that she co-authored, published after her husband's death, a small recognition that does not reflect the scope of her work. It was common for "museum wives" to accompany their husbands in the field, take field notes, and prepare specimens. Although Virginia was one of Miller's most important scientific collaborators, her role went relatively unrecognized in the male-dominated MVZ. While this paper does not address the influential role of women in twentieth-century natural history, Virginia Miller is an example of a much wider phenomenon that warrants further analysis. See Alden Miller and Virginia Dove Miller, "The Behavioral Ecology and Breeding Biology of the Andean Sparrow, Zonotrichia capensis," Caldasia 10(1966):83-154.
73. For more on the activities of the "museum wives" see William Z. Licker, "The Museum Wives Group: MVZ's Hidden Power Structure for Almost Three Decades," MVZ, http://mvz.berkeley.edu/MVZ-Wives.html (accessed 14 Mar. 2011). Officially, there were few women in the MVZ during Miller's directorship. Mary J. Taylor remembers being the only woman student. As a woman, she was not allowed to be a curatorial assistant or participate in any overnight collecting trips;
74. Elizabeth J. Horner, Mary Taylor, Alicia V. Linzey, and Gail R. Michener, "Women in Mammalogy (1940-1994): Personal Perspectives," Journal of Mammalogy 77(1996):655-74.
75. For more on women in the MVZ's early days see Barbara Stein, "Women in Mammalogy: The Early Years," Journal of Mammalogy 77(1996):629-41
76. For the role of women in ornithology see Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, "Field Work and Family: North American Woman Ornithologists, 1900-1950," in Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789-1979, ed. Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 60-299.
77. Alden Miller, "Field Technique in Collecting for a Research Museum," Museum News (1 Mar. 1940):6-8, on 6.
78. Sunderland, "Teaching Natural History" (ref. 20).
79. Alden Miller, "Systematic Revision and Natural History of the American Shrikes (Lanius)" (PhD dissertation, UCB, 1930), 310.
80. Julian Huxley, ed., The New Systematics (Oxford: University Press, 1940).
81. Miller, "Systematic Revision" (ref. 34), 310-11.
82. Alden Miller, "Hybridization of Juncos in Captivity," Condor 40, no. 2(1938):92-93.
83. Richard Eakin, "History of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley," Bios 27, no. 2(1956):67-90.
84. Alden Miller, "Speciation in the Avian Genus Junco," University of California Publications in Zoology 44(1941):173-434, on 173.
85. Grinnell, "Chestnut-Backed Chickadee" (ref. 21).
86. Miller, "Speciation" (ref. 42); Ernst Mayr to John Davis, 14 Feb. 1966, MO.
87. Davis, "In Memoriam: Alden Holmes Miller" (ref. 8), 201.
88. Ernst Mayr, "Review: Speciation in the Junco," Ecology 23(1942):378-79. A. Miller to E. Mayr, 14 Sep. 1942, MVZC, Folder Mayr.
89. Alden Miller, "Speciation in the Avian Genus Junco," 18 Dec. 1942, M P, Box 7, Folder Old Outlines for Special Lectures and Talks.
90. Frank Pitelka, interviewed by David Gaines, "Interview with Dr. Frank Pitelka about the Genesis of Grinnell and Miller's Distribution of the Birds of California," 10 Mar. 1986, MVZC, Folder Pitelka.
91. Lincoln Constance, "Alden Miller, an Administrator," 10 Dec. 1965, MO.
92. Miller, "Field Technique" (ref. 31).
93. Miller, "Curator as Research Worker" (ref. 18).
94. A. Starker Leopold to Clark Kerr, 1 May 1958, "Space Used for Research," MVZC, Folder Chancellor 1952-58; A. Miller to C. Kerr, Mar-Apr. 1955, MVZC, Folder Chancellor 1952-58.
95. Eakin, "Miller, an Experimentalist" (ref. 28).
96. Grinnell suffered his first heart attack in August 1938, and later died of a second on May 29, 1939. While Grinnell was working and recuperating at home, Hall was Acting Director; see E. Raymond Hall, "Joseph Grinnell (1877 to 1939)," Journal of Mammalogy 20, no. 4(1939):409-17, on 409.
97. J. Grinnell, "Memo," 20 Mar. 1939, AMA-MVZ, Box 2, Folder 5.
98. L. Miller, "Notes on Alden Miller," 16 Mar. 1966, MO.
99. Eakin, "Alden Miller, an Experimentalist" (ref. 28).
100. Although these curators were jointly hired by the MVZ and the Department of Zoology (not Miller personally), many received the bulk of their salaries from MVZ funds (and not from the University of California) and were targeted by Miller in the "old-boys-club method" of hiring. Although he was criticized for conservative hiring practices that favored MVZ graduates, this was not entirely true; hiring from within was a common practice at the time; see Eakin, "History of Zoology" (ref. 41), 76-80. I refer to Miller hiring these faculty members because his active role in the process was critically important.
101. A. Starker Leopold to Robert Connick, re "The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Program and Status," 9 Dec. 1965, MVZC, Folder Annual Reports.
102. Javier A. Rodriguez-Robles, David A. Good, and David B. Wake, Brief History of Herpetology in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, with a List of Type Specimens of Recent Amphibians and Reptiles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), vi; Leopold to Kerr, 1 May 1958, MVZC (ref. 57).
103. A. H. Miller, "Analysis of Functions of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Part II," 8 Mar. 1946, MVZC, Folder President 1941-50.
104. "MVZ Thesis Database," MVZ Digital Archives, MVZ, UCB.
105. Stephen Glickman and Irving Zucker, "Frank A. Beach (1911-1988)," American Psychologist 44, no. 9(1989):1234-35.
106. Frank A. Beach to Chancellor Seaborg, re "Field Station Proposal," 15 Sep. 1959, Stephen Glickman's personal files, UCB.
107. Combined analysis of Alden Holmes Miller's fieldnotes, observations of captive birds, and specimens are listed in the Arctos database at http://arctos.database.museum/SpecimenSearch.cfm; William Z. Lidicker (hired in 1957 as mammal curator for the MVZ and now emeritus professor and curator) confirmed that there has never been a formal policy regarding the accessioning of captive animals into the MVZ's collections. William Z. Lidicker, personal communication, 11 Oct. 2011, MVZ.
108. Some MVZ faculty and students do continue to work with live animals: for example, Eileen Lacy's work with tuco-tucos. William Z. Lidicker, interview, Dec. 2009, "MVZ Thesis Database" (ref. 72).
109. "Education: Master Planner," Time, 17 Oct. 1960;
110. Mary Soo and Cathryn Carson, "Managing the Research University: Clark Kerr and the University of California," Minerva 42(2004):215-36.
111. Alden Miller, "Collections Committee Report," 23 Dec. 1953, M P, Box 5, Folder Collections, on 3.
112. Another example of Miller's administrative prowess: Miller saved the Department of Paleontology. In 1959 the Department of Paleontology and the Museum of Paleontology were on the verge of dissolution. Just when the Chancellor authorized faculty reassignment, Miller volunteered to assume acting directorship of paleontology, and at the end of the year he presented a "confederated department." Miller's influence did not protect just the MVZ's collections; it protected collections in general. See Constance, "Alden Miller, an Administrator" (ref. 54), 2.
113. "Progress Report: Administrative Reorganization of the University," 7 May 1962, The Bancroft Library, UCB, Chancellor Records, Box 69, Folder 25.
114. Toby Appel, Shaping Biology: The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945-1975 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000);
115. See, for example, Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Taxonomy, Molecular Biology, and the Peck Order," Evolution 15, no. 2(1961):263-64.
116. A. H. Miller to R. G. Sproul, re "Annual Report," 30 Apr. 1942, MVZC, Folder President Correspondence.
117. Frank Pitelka, "Academic Family Tree for Loye and Alden Miller," Condor 95(1993):1065-67. Many of Miller's students went on to supervise graduate students of their own, notably: Aldo Starker Leopold (1944), Frank A. Pitelka (1946), Charles G. Sibley (1948), Thomas R. Howell (1951), Robert K. Selander (1956), Ned K. Johnson (1961), and Robert B. Payne (1965).
118. Frederick Test, "The Nature of the Red, Yellow, and Orange Pigments in Woodpeckers of the Genus Colaptes" (PhD dissertation, UCB, 1940), 183;
119. Frederick Test, "Effects of Natural Abrasion and Oxidation on the Coloration of Flickers," Condor 42, no. 1(1940):76-80.
120. Test, "Effects of Natural Abrasion" (ref. 93).
121. Albert Wolfson, "The Role of the Gonads, Pituitary, and Hypothalamus in the Regulation of Spring Migration in the Oregon Junco" (PhD dissertation, UCB, 1942).
122. Miller began publishing his work on photoperiodicity in 1948; Alden H. Miller, "The Refractory Period in Light-Induced Reproductive Development of Golden-Crowned Sparrows," Journal of Experimental Zoology 109, no. 1(1948):1-11.
123. Alden Miller, "Capacity for Photoperiodic Response and Endogenous Factors in the Reproductive Cycles of an Equatorial Sparrow," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 54(1965):97-101.
124. Alden Miller and Robert Stebbins, The Lives of Desert Animals in Joshua Tree National Monument (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964)
125. and Aldo Starker Leopold, Wildlife of Mexico: The Game Birds and Mammals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959).
126. Alden Miller, "Memorandum on Oregon Field Work," 1938, MVZC, Folder Miller 1931-1964.
127. Frank Pitelka, "Speciation and Ecologic Distribution in American Jays of the Genus Aphelocoma" (PhD dissertation, UCB, 1946).
128. John Barlow and Nancy Flood, "Research Collections in Ornithology," in Perspective in Ornithology: Essays Presented for the Centennial of the American Ornithologists' Union, ed. Alan H. Brush and George Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 37-54.
129. Charles Gald Sibley, "Species Formation in the Red-Eyed Towhees Avian Genus Pipilo" (PhD dissertation, UCB, 1948).
130. Alan H. Brush, "Charles Gald Sibley 1917-1998," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 83(2003):1-24, on 9.
131. Robert Payne, "Charles Gald Sibley (1917-1998)," Ibis 140, no. 4(1998):697-99, on 699;
132. John Ahlquist, "Charles G. Sibley: A Commentary on 30 Years of Collaboration," Auk 116, no. 3(1999):856-60, on 856. Both Allan Wilson and Robert Selander later collaborated with the MVZ;
133. Ahlquist, "Charles G. Sibley" (ref. 110), 856.
134. Charles Sibley and A. Johnsgard, "Variability in the Electrophoretic Patterns of Avian Serum Proteins," Condor 61(1959):85-95.
135. Payne, "Charles Gald Sibley" (ref. 110), 698.
136. Although Sibley's work generated some controversy, in 1991 the American Ornithologists Union adopted Sibley and Ahlquist's classification; for more on Sibley's influence see Bruno Strasser, personal e-mail, 6 Jan 2012. Sibley's books are cited thousands of times; Charles G. Sibley and Burt L. Monroe, Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990);
137. Charles G. Sibley and Jon E. Ahlquist, Phylogeny and Classification of Birds: A Study in Molecular Evolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).
138. Allen, Life Science (ref. 4);
139. Maienschein, Rainger, and Benson, "Special Section" (ref. 5);
140. Rainger, Benson, and Maienschein, American Development of Biology (ref. 2).
141. Kohler, "Practice and Place" (ref. 13).
142. See, for example, Jardine, Secord, and Spray, eds., Cultures of Natural History (ref. 2).