William Franklin Blair (25 June 1912 – 1984) was a zoologist and president of the Ecological Society of America .[ 1] [ 2]
Life
Blair was born in Dayton, Texas . He was the eldest of five children of Percy Franklin and Mona Clyde (Patrick) Blair. In 1916, his family moved tro Oklahoma , where Blair graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1930, then from the University of Tulsa in 1934 with a degree in zoology. He married Fern Antell, a librarian at the university, on October 25, 1933.[ 3]
Career
Blair earned his master's degree at the University of Florida in 1935, and completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1938.[ 1] His advisor was Lee R. Dice
He began to work at the University of Michigan's Laboratory of Vertebrate Biology in 1937. He studied the home ranges of small mammals , as well as their pelage color which match both dark and light soils in the White Sands, New Mexico .[ 4] In 1942, Blair joined the military service in the Air Force Altitude Training and Survival programs during the WWII , returning to Michigan briefly afterwards. Blair became professor at the University of Texas in 1955, where he remained until retirement in 1982 as professor emeritus in zoology.[ 1] [ 2] [ 3] Blair became a prominent professor as the first director of the university's Brackenridge Field Laboratory and chairman of the budget council for the Marine Science Institute . Blair's academic life focused on herpetology evolution , but included ecological land classification . The latter project with the International Biological Program , a fifty-seven-nation project sponsored by the International Council of Scientific Unions , which led to a better understanding of the world's ecosystems . From 1968 to 1972 Blair was chairman of the United States National Committee of the IBP . Blair was a founder of the Southwestern Association of Naturalists , becoming its president. He also served as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences , the Ecological Society of America , the Society for the Study of Evolution , and the Texas Herpetological Society, He served as vice-president of American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and of the Texas Academy of Science .
Works
Between 1935 and 1982 Blair published or edited some 162 papers, articles, and books.
Vertebrates of the United States (1957)
The Rusty Lizard: A Population Study (1960)
Evolution in the Genus Bufo (1972)
Big Biology: The U.S.- International Biological Program (1977)
The Biotic Provineces of Texas . (1950)
Awards and legacy
Blair received many awards.
He is commemorated by the W. Frank Blair Eminent Naturalist Award .[ 5]
Blair and his wife donated ten acres, on the site of Fort Colorado , to the Travis Audubon Society as a natural preserve for ecological studies known as Blair Woods .
The "blairi" color morph of the gray-banded kingsnake is named after Frank Blair. It was originally described as a new species, Lampropeltis blairi , later considered a subspecies, Lampropeltis alterna blairi , and then determined to be a color morph.[ 6] [ 7]
References
^ a b c "President W. Frank Blair" (PDF) . Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America . 43 (4): 105– 106. December 1962. doi :10.2307/20165589 . JSTOR 20165589 . S2CID 252228148 .
^ a b "A Guide to the W. Frank Blair Papers, 1935-1986" . Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
^ a b "Blair, William Franklin (1912–1985)" . tshaonline.org . Texas State Historical Association.
^ Chapman, Brian R.; Bolen, Eric G. (2018). The Natural History of Texas . College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press. ISBN 978-1-62349-572-5 .
^ "W. Frank Blair Eminent Naturalist Award" . BioMedSearch . Retrieved 5 October 2017 .
^ Beolens B , Watkins M , Grayson M (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5 . ("Blair, W. F.", p. 26).
^ Species Lampropeltis alterna at The Reptile Database
www.reptile-database.org.
International National Other