Adriaan Joseph van Rossem

Adriaan Joseph van Rossem is a American ornithologist , born the December 17th 1892 with Chicago and died in 1957.

He is the son of Adriaan Cornelis van Rossem and Josephine born Williams. His/her father is an eminent of political life and economic figure of Rotterdam. After having been in function in London, it settles in Chicago where it meets his future wife. The father of this one lived in Goderich, in the Ontario, and dealt of production and wood trade. He dies the February 6th 1895 with Leysin-on-Eagle, in Suisse, where he had gone for health reasons. Its widow and her two sons, old one year and one year and half, turn over then to the Canada. A few months later, their mother leaves to settle with Pasadena in California.

The Adriaan young person made there his studies and enters later in Throop Institute (today California Institute off Technology) in 1903. It is interested very early in the Natural history, supported interest by a teaching play Joseph Grinnell (1877-1939). When this one leaves to Berkeley in 1908, the two men start a regular correspondence where Grinnell continuous to guide van Rossem in its first scientific studies of Natural history.

Van Rossem makes scientific excursions very early. The first of them takes along to 16 years with James B. Dixon in the Coronados islands. In 1910 - 1911, it leaves to explore the sea of Salton, then in spring 1911, it leaves in the island Santa Crux with Alfred Brazier Howell (1886-1961) and, finally, from February to August 1912 it explores El Salvador. Beginning 1913, the Rossem family buys a ranch with Pomona to approach nature. But van Rossem prefers to be devoted to the study of nature and, he with Grinnel, “it writes prefers to spend one year to collect specimens of natural history, rather than to be a farmer during one week has. He is engaged by John Eugene Law (1877-1931) like collector and van Rossem leaves in 1914 - 1915 in the mountains Chiricahua in Arizona. But the two men are opposed soon and no publication follows this forwarding.

Of 1915 with 1917, van Rossem works in mining industry in the Sierra Nevada. In April 1917, Adriaan and its brother Walter Johannes enlist in the American army and leave to the drive to San Diego and Fort Lewis. Adriaan between at the school of the officers and becomes second lieutenant in 1918 later then first lieutenant a few months. In May 1919, it leaves the regular army to become reservist and turns over to the civil life.

With the autumn 1919, it starts to collaborate with Donald Ryder Dickey (1887-1932). This one, settling in the south of California notes that it misses an institution of research on the fauna of Central America. It then constitutes a collection of search for nearly thirty thousand specimens of mammals and birds; this figure will be doubled at the time of its death. Van Rossem and Dickey then start narrow and profitable collaboration which will last nearly thirteen years. Van Rossem is the author of the majority of harvests and the publications on the birds. It goes on many journeys to El Salvador, only or like guides for other scientists like Ruben Arthur Stirton (1901-1966) or Alden Holmer Miller (1906-1965). The collections are supplemented by purchases like that of James T. Wright.

Rossem gives courses starting from 1928 to the Westerner College of Los Angeles which will recognize its action by the attribution of a title of honorary doctor in 1948. He travels to Europe to study the ornithological collections there, initially in 1933, then in 1938, where he takes part in the international Congress of ornithology of Rouen. The death of Dickey, in 1932, is a stage during one difficult period for van Rossem: on the one hand, California Institute off Technology which sheltered the collections of Dickey refuses to continue; in addition, the divorce with his wife, Grace Coolidge, which he had married in 1918, is officialized in 1934; it remarie then with Florence S. Stevenson. Lastly, the economic crisis makes very dubious the search for subsidies. Van Rossem calls for the aid Clinton Gilbert Abbott (1881-1946) of the San Diego Natural History Society. The collections of Dickey are finally offered to the University of California thanks to the action of Loye Holmes Miller (1874-1970). Van Rossem then receives the title of conservative for this collection (and will be named later senior zoologist) with the responsibility of give readings in zoology in 1946. It off receives in 1941 the Médaille Brewster for its book The Birds El El Salvador . It is interested mainly in south-west of the the United States. After the death of its second wife in 1944, it Marie again with Dorothy Sanderson. This one dies two years later, which is a great drama in the life of van Rossem.

He is member various learned societies of which the American Ornithologists' Union, the Sociedad de Biología of Mexico City…

Random links: