James Chapin

For the American painter and illustrator, see James Ormsbee Chapin. For the jazz musician, see Jim Chapin.
James Paul Chapin
Born(1889-07-09)9 July 1889
Died5 April 1964(1964-04-05) (aged 74)
Alma materColumbia University (BA, MA, PhD)

James Paul Chapin (July 9, 1889 – April 5, 1964) was an American ornithologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History.[1]

Biography

Chapin is one of the highest-regarded ornithologists of the twentieth century.[2] He was joint leader (with Herbert Lang) of the Lang–Chapin expedition, which made a biological survey of the Belgian Congo between 1909 and 1915. For his work The Birds of the Belgian Congo, Part I, he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1932.[3] He received a bachelor's degree in 1916, master's degree in 1917, and a doctorate in 1932, all from Columbia University, and then began a lengthy career at the American Museum of Natural History.[2][4]

Chapin served as the 17th president of The Explorers Club from 1949 to 1950.

Intelligence officer in the Congo

In 1942, Chapin was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services intelligence agency as an intelligence officer. Under the cover of special assistant to the US consul based in Léopoldville, Chapin took the code name CRISP and reported back military and economic information. According to Susan Williams, he was "evidently more comfortable bird-watching than spy-watching" and was withdrawn from the Congo after a while. He was then admitted at a psychiatric clinic, was finally discharged in September 1943 and went back home. He resumed his functions at the American Museum of Natural History in October 1943.[5]

Legacy

Chapin is commemorated in the scientific names of three species of African reptiles: Ichnotropis chapini, Pelusios chapini, and Trioceros chapini.[6] Chapin returned to the Belgian Congo in 1953 to continue fieldwork which he had started more than half a century earlier. When asked about his most famous discovery, he mentioned the Congo peafowl, adding that he had obtained a feather from this hitherto unknown bird from a pygmy on one of his expeditions, but had never seen the bird. It was unknown to science. Years later he was able to identify it as the rare Congo peafowl.

References

  1. ^ "Dr. James P. Chapin Dies at 74; Adventurous Authority on Birds; Natural History Museum's Curator Emeritus Sought Secrets of the Jungle". The New York Times. 1964-04-07. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-09-25.
  2. ^ a b "Staten Island on the Web: Famous Staten Islanders". New York Public Library. Archived from the original on February 10, 2009.
  3. ^ "Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on June 20, 2014. Retrieved March 5, 2015.
  4. ^ Columbia College (Columbia University). Office of Alumni Affairs and Development; Columbia College (Columbia University) (1996). Columbia College today. Columbia University Libraries. New York, N.Y. : Columbia College, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development.
  5. ^ Williams, Susan (2018). Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb. London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. pp. 29–39. ISBN 9781849049528.
  6. ^ Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Chapin", pp. 51–52).
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