Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches



Moreau, Reginald Ernest (England 1897-1970)
ornithology

Moreau, an amateur with no scientific training, spent most of the middle part of his adult life in Tanzania in a civil service job. There, he spent his free time studying birds in the wild and organizing an Africa-wide network of observers who provided him with a wealth of ornithological data over a many-year period. When he retired from the civil service in 1946 he returned to England and obtained a research position at the Edward Grey Institute at Oxford University; for fifteen years thereafter he also served as a diligently effective editor of The Ibis. His already highly regarded career was topped off by a trio of important books published in 1966, 1970, and 1972 (two years after his death), respectively: The Bird Faunas of Africa and Its Islands, An Atlas of Speciation in African Passerine Birds, and The Palaearctic-African Bird Migration Systems.

Life Chronology

--born in Kingston-on-Thames, England, on 29 May 1897.
--1914: graduates from Kingston Grammar School; joins the Army Audit Office
–1920-1927: stationed in Egypt
--1928-1946: librarian at the Agricultural and Forestry Research Station, Amani, Tanzania (near the East Usambara Mountains)
--1937-1944: compiles extensive observations and records on individual birds and their nests
--1941-1960: corresponds extensively with J. P. Chapin of the American Museum of Natural History
--1946: retires from the civil service; returns to England
--1946-1960: editor of The Ibis, journal of the British Ornithologists' Union
--1947-1966: works at the Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
--1949: made an honorary fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union
–1960-1965: president of the British Ornithologists' Union
--1962: publishes "A Study of the Rare Birds of Africa" in the Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Zoology, with B. P. Hall
--1966: awarded the British Ornithologists' Union's Godman-Salvin medal
--1966: publishes his The Bird Faunas of Africa and Its Islands
--1968: publishes his The Departed Village: Berrick Salome at the Turn of the Century
--1970: publishes his An Atlas of Speciation in African Passerine Birds, with B. P. Hall
--dies at Hereford, England, on 30 May 1970.
--1972: his book The Palaearctic-African Bird Migration Systems is posthumously completed and published by James Monk

For Additional Information, See:

--Journal für Ornithologie, Vol. 112(1) (January 1971): 97-100.
--The Condor, Vol. 102(1) (2000): 3-8.
--The Ibis, Vol. 108(3) (July 1966): frontispiece.
--Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 37(3) (October 2004): 515-555.


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Copyright 2007 by Charles H. Smith. All rights reserved.
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/chronob/MORE1897.htm

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