Person PX3763 Austin; Oliver Luther (1903-1988); Ornithologist Austin Oliver Luther 1903-1988 Ornithologist Male Born 24 May 1903 Tuckahoe, New York. Died 1 January 1988

Oliver went to Harvard University and the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) where he continued to travel and collect, serving as naturalist on the Mason- Blodgett Expedition in 1927, collecting for the MCZ on the Yucatan Peninsula and in British Honduras. In 1930, he began work for the Bureau of Biological Survey in Minnesota , Oliver also directed the Austin Ornithological Research Station at Wellfleet, which he and his father had founded in 1929. At the beginning of World War II, Oliver a Cape Codder with years of sailing experience enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served as a line officer in the South Pacific through the war. Wherever his tanker docked, Oliver collected specimens in the Solomons, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Caledonia, and New Hebrides and sent the skins to the MCZ. In 1946 he transferred to Japan to serve on General MacArthur's personal staff to organize and head the Wildlife Branch of the Occupation government until late 1949. Oliver wrote a set of modern wildlife regulations that were well accepted by the Japanese people. Most of these conservation laws are still in effect. After the Occupation the Japanese government adopted Austin's game laws, conservation regulations, and sanctuary programs virtually unchanged. Oliver returned to Cape Cod in 1950 and received a Guggenheim fellowship to continue his writing. Subsequently, the Austin family moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where Oliver served as Professor of Zoology at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base. In 1957 Oliver took up the post of Curator of Birds at the Florida State Museum. Oliver gradually built the bird skin collection from 1,800 to more than 17,500 specimens. When the new Florida State Museum (now the Florida Museum of Natural History) was built and the growing collection was installed in a large range, room was included for Oliver's books and journals, which he gave to the museum after his retirement. It is now the Austin Memorial Library. The Birds of Korea (1948) The Birds of Japan, Their Status and Distribution (1953) Yes Idealist Import 4namepers.txt 28/02/2004 NHM\laurb5 17/12/2018 5e449cbe-fced-4c0a-a589-c36352a4d8d9