Friends
Science is a social enterprise. The history of science is no different, and certainly in preparing The Wisdom of Birds I relied heavily on a number of friends for help and expert opinion. It may be invidious to single out particular individuals, but a handful of people provided help far beyond the call of duty.
One of the luckiest events during the writing of The Wisdom of Birds was getting a PhD studentship for someone to evaluate an unpublished manuscript of a French encyclopaedia of birds written in the 1600s (see Research). Even luckier was finding Isabelle Charmantier (with a Masters in history; a fair degree of competence in her native language and a passion for natural history) as a research student. Keen to promote interdisciplinary research, the University of Sheffield provided the studentship (which was co-supervised by Mark Greengrass (in History), Emily Butterworth (in French; later replaced by Peter Ainsworth) and myself (biology). Rarely has PhD supervision been so reciprocal: I taught Isabelle about birds and she educated me in history.
Another source of wonderful help came from Karl Schulze-Hagen, a busy German medic whose hobby is ornithology and its history. Karl´s knowledge of German ornithology and ornithologists – past and present – is unparalleled and he selflessly helped me by tracking down obscure German references and images.
One of Karl’s colleagues is Juergen Haffer, a retired geologist whose hobby is ornithology. The great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr described Haffer´s work on bird speciation as the best. Haffer has written a biography of Mayr (Haffer 2007: Ornithology, Evolution and Philosophy: The Life and Science of Ernst Mayr 1904-2005. Springer) and several papers on the history of European ornithology. My conversations with Juergen were invaluable, instructive and inspirational and he generously read the entire manuscript.
Another person that read the manuscript was Bob Montgomerie, a behavioural ecologist and ornithologist at Queen´s University, Kingston, Canada. Although not specifically interested in the history of ornithology, I think he became a convert. His love of books and knowledge of birds made him the ideal reader. The many other people that helped are acknowledged in the book.
