Sidney Dillon Ripley

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Sidney Dillon Ripley
Robert McCormick Adams
Personal details
Born
Sidney Dillon Ripley II

September 20, 1913
New York City, New York
DiedMarch 12, 2001(2001-03-12) (aged 87)
Washington, D.C.
NationalityAmerican
EducationYale University (BA)
Harvard University (PhD)
Known forOrnithology
AwardsPresidential Medal of Freedom (1985)[1]
Padma Bhushan (1986)[2]

Sidney Dillon Ripley II (September 20, 1913 – March 12, 2001) was an American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist. He served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years, from 1964 to 1984, leading the institution through its period of greatest growth and expansion. For his leadership at the Smithsonian, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985.[3]

Biography

Early life

Ripley was born in New York City, after a brother, Louis, was born in 1906 in Litchfield, Connecticut.[4] His mother was Constance Baillie Rose of Scottish descent while his father was Louis Arthur Dillon Ripley, a wealthy real estate agent who drove around in an 1898 Renault Voiturette. Both his paternal grandparents, Julia and Josiah Dwight Ripley, died before he was born but he was connected to them through Cora Dillon Wyckoff. Great Aunt Cora and her husband, Dr. Peter Wyckoff, often hosted young Ripley at their Park Avenue apartment. Cora's and Julia's father (his great-grandfather) and partial namesake was Sidney Dillon, twice President of the Union Pacific Railroad.[5] and his uncle was Sidney Dillon Ripley I. Both Gilded Age tycoons.

Ripley's early education was at the Montessori Kindergarten School on Madison Avenue. As a young boy, he traveled widely including to British Columbia where his mother's relatives lived. In April 1918, his mother, who had separated from his father, moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1919 the family moved again to Boston, where he studied in a school called Rivers. At the age of ten, he traveled again with his mother across Europe. In 1924 Ripley went to a boarding school called Fay in Southborough, Massachusetts.

In 1926 he followed in Louis' footsteps, attending

St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. In 1936, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University. While at Yale he briefly considered a more traditional career path after a conversation with his brother. "Louis told me we ought to have a lawyer in the family," he has said, "but I really hated the idea, and in the summer of 1936, after graduating from college, I resolved to abandon all thoughts of a prosperous and worthy future and devote myself to birds, the subject I was overpoweringly interested in."[6]

Travel and education

Ripley in front of the Smithsonian Quadrangle Complex
Ripley & unidentified children with "Uncle Beazley," the dinosaur at the opening of the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, September 15, 1967

A friend of the Ripleys,

PhD in Zoology from Harvard University
in 1943.

War service and academic work

During

Smithsonian administrator, noted that there were many CIA agents in India, with some posing as scientists. He noted that the Smithsonian sent a scholar to India for anthropological research who unknown to them was interviewing Tibetan refugees from Chinese-occupied Tibet but went on to say that there was no evidence that Ripley worked for the CIA after he left the OSS in 1945.[12]

He joined the

International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP, now BirdLife International
).

Smithsonian Institution

He served as secretary of the

Sculpture Garden, Renwick Gallery, National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of African Art, Enid A. Haupt Garden, the underground quadrangle complex known as the S. Dillon Ripley Center, and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.[9]

In 1967, he helped found the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and in 1970, he helped found Smithsonian magazine. He believed that 75% to 80% of then-living animal species would become extinct in the next 25 years.[20]

In 1985 he was awarded the

Cambridge. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[21][22][23]

Ripley successfully defended the National Museum of Natural History against a lawsuit that objected to the Dynamics of Evolution exhibit.[9]

Legacy

Plaque dedicating the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden

Ripley had intended to produce a definitive guide to the birds of

Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide
in his honor.

The Smithsonian's underground complex on the National Mall, the S. Dillon Ripley Center, is named in his honor. A garden between the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Arts and Industries Building was dedicated in 1988 to his wife, Mary Livingston Ripley.

The first-ever full-length biography of Ripley, The Lives of Dillon Ripley: Natural Scientist, Wartime Spy, and Pioneering Leader of the Smithsonian Institution by Roger D. Stone, was published in 2017.[24]

The

Laysan Teal as well as the first US captive breedings of New Zealand scaup, Greenland Mallard (A. p. conboschas), and Philippine duck. In 1985, Dillon and his wife, Mary Livingston Ripley, donated the chunk of their estate that is today the zoo to the non-profit organization that continues to operate it. Today the zoo houses over 60 species of birds, totaling over 400 individual animals. Ripley's three daughters continue to serve on the zoo's board of directors.[25]

Selected writings

Notes

  1. ^ "Announcement of the Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, April 8, 1985". The American Presidency Project. University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved 13 December 2013.
  2. ^ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Retrieved July 21, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d Molotsky, Irvin (13 March 2001). "S. Dillon Ripley Dies at 87; Led the Smithsonian Institution During Its Greatest Growth". The New York Times. p. 9.
  4. ^ "Louis R. Ripley". The New York Times. Mar 10, 1983. Retrieved Aug 12, 2020.
  5. ^ Stone (2017):1-5.
  6. ^ Hellman, Geoffrey T. "Curator Getting Around". The New Yorker. Retrieved Aug 12, 2020.
  7. ^ Stone (2017):10-15.
  8. ^ Stone (2017):25.
  9. ^ a b c "S. Dillon Ripley, 1913-2001". Smithsonian Institution Archives. Apr 14, 2011. Retrieved Aug 12, 2020.
  10. ^ Stone (2017):46.
  11. ^ Stone (2017):48-49.
  12. ^ a b c Lewis, Michael (2002). "Scientists or Spies? Ecology in a Climate of Cold War Suspicion". Economic and Political Weekly. 37.
  13. ^ Stone (2017):56-58.
  14. ^ Stone (2017):60.
  15. ^ Stone (2017):58.
  16. ^ Hellman, Geoffrey T. (1950) Curator Getting Around. The New Yorker. August 26, 1950.
  17. ^ Lewis, Michael (2003) Inventing Global Ecology: Tracking the Biodiversity Ideal in India, 1945-1997. Orient Blackswan. p. 117.
  18. ^ Stone (2017):75-76.
  19. ^ Stone (2017):66-68.
  20. ^ R Bailey (2000) Earth day then and now, Reason 32(1), 18-28
  21. ^ "S. Dillon Ripley". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
  22. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
  23. ^ "Sidney Dillon Ripley". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
  24. ISBN 978-1-5126-0061-2
    .
  25. ^ "LRWC - history". Archived from the original on 2010-05-09.

References

External links

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