Obituary: Sydney Anderson (1927–2018)

Authors

Scott Lyell Gardner, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Robert M. Timm, University of KansasFollow
Nancy Olds, Educational Testing Service
Hugh H. Genoways, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

2020

Document Type

Article

Citation

Journal of Mammalogy (2020) 101(3): 900-915.

doi: 10.1093/jammal/gyaa018

Also available at https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/101/3/900/5817699.

Comments

Copyright 2020, Oxford Academic. Used by permission.

Abstract

On August 12, 2018, the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) lost one of its giants of the latter half of the 20th century when Sydney Anderson quietly passed away at his home in Birmingham, Alabama, at the age of 91. “Syd,” to his many friends and colleagues, was born on January 11, 1927 in Topeka, Kansas, to Robert Grant and Evelyn Fern (Hunt) Anderson.

Anderson began his professional career at the University of Kansas, where for four years (1955–1959) he served as Assistant Curator in charge of mammals in the Museum of Natural History, and Instructor in the Department of Zoology while he was undertaking his Ph.D. degree work. In 1960, he took the position (1960–1964) of Assistant Curator of Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History and progressed through the ranks to Associate Curator (1964–1969) and Curator (1969–1992).

The breadth of Anderson’s professional scientific interests can be judged both by his publication record and by the societies that he joined as a life member in addition to the ASM—American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Ornithological Association, and the Southwestern Association of Naturalists (Charter Patron)—as well as the other societies in which he held memberships—AAAS (Fellow, 1963), American Ornithologists Union, American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Ecological Society of America, Society of Systematic Zoology, Wildlife Society, Sigma Xi, and Phi Sigma Biological Society.

Anderson was a prolific researcher and author. Authored titles include The Macdonald Encyclopedia of Mammals (1986) and Mammals of Bolivia: Taxonomy and Distribution (1997), the latter of which was his opus work after years of intense work throughout all of Bolivia.