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3 AUGUST 1915 * 7 NOVEMBER 2003
IMAGES FROM A LIFE: Two enthusiastic Harvard undergraduates discover that bats have sonar. . . . A father carefully lowers his children into cave passages too small for an adult to collect bats. . . . A scientist flies a light plane and diligently follows a large gannet on the wing. . . . Standing outdoors before distinguished foreign visitors (Marie-Claire and René-Guy Busnel), an apparently serious professor shoots a pebble (intended to provoke a bat to pursue the "insect") and, at first try, this American cowboy hits a flying bat in the wing . . . wisely doesn't try again. ... A loving wife asks, "And how is your 'whitewashing the fence' [a reference to Tom Sawyer's escapade] coming along these days?" ... In Italy, wife Jocelyn, dictionary in hand, rehearses, with Don and bat colleague Jim Simmons, contingency phrases in Italian should they encounter a farmer while climbing a ladder: "Oh, sir, I have not come to elope with your daughter. I just want to look at your bats." . . . Technical advice sent to me as I study plovers includes not manuals for my electronic equipment, but Michener's Chesapeake. . . . Eighty-seven years old, still clambering over snow and ice, he threads a video cable into a beavers' lodge to record their activities.
And, of course, many more images and tales abound in recalling the life and accomplishments of Donald Redfield Griffin. He is considered one of the outstanding scientists of the twentieth century, for most of his life "a scientist's scientist, noted for rigorous research in animal behavior" (a description by Donald Dewsbury). As such, he is recognized for that initial discovery of bat echolocation with Robert Galambos (1938) and for subsequent years of study, much of which provided an essential basis for the development of radar and sonar. He is renowned, as well, for his work on birds' navigational abilities and for his contributions to and re-awakening of scientific interest in (and controversy over) animal cognition and consciousness. In his last years he was also avidly exploring near-field acoustics in honeybee communication and the apparently purposeful behavior of beavers.
Don Griffin's most formative educational years probably occurred during two...