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The pros and cons of living in Tenafly, New Jersey
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The pros and cons of living in Tenafly, New Jersey
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Views | Duration | ||
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21. A few words about the collections | 205 | 01:53 | |
22. Bringing the collections together | 185 | 03:58 | |
23. Arriving in New York | 1 | 364 | 00:49 |
24. Getting married, having children and moving house | 1 | 317 | 01:44 |
25. The pros and cons of living in Tenafly, New Jersey | 250 | 01:25 | |
26. Geographical species variation in birds | 278 | 01:58 | |
27. Lucky accidents that led to fame | 352 | 04:08 | |
28. Systematics and the Origin of the Species | 419 | 05:16 | |
29. Putting my knowledge to good use | 265 | 02:32 | |
30. Why birds are a good starting point in biology | 1 | 347 | 00:38 |
I had met my wife also in International House, because she was an exchange student at Wheaton College, and we continued our courtship by correspondence and I finally married her in May 1935 in Freiberg, Germany, which was her home town. And then we moved into Upper Manhattan, a small apartment where our first child was born, and then we decided that the children – and we would hope to have another child – the children should grow up somewhere in a suburb and not on Manhattan. And we got ourselves a house in Tenafly, New Jersey, and getting that house was really quite funny because the real estate agent asked, 'Now, how much money have you saved up for the down payment? And what is your salary? How much can you pay per month and in... for the mortgage?' and so forth. And after he got all that information he said, 'Well, then we have to go to the part of Tenafly where the $8000 houses are'. And so we went to the part of Tenafly with the $8000 houses and there was indeed another college professor - a professor of psychology in NYU [New York University] who became one of our closest friends; but the other neighbours were all people that could afford an $8000 house. One was an... an electrician, fine mechanic working for Bell Telephone, another one was a... on... paper salesman, another was a plumbing salesman, and so on and so forth.
The late German-American biologist Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) was a leading light in the field of evolutionary biology, gaining a PhD at the age of 21. He was also a tropical explorer and ornithologist who undertook an expedition to New Guinea and collected several thousand bird skins. In 1931 he accepted a curatorial position at the American Museum of Natural History. During his time at the museum, aged 37, he published his seminal work 'Systematics and Origin of the Species' which integrated the theories of Darwin and Mendel and is considered one of his greatest works.
Title: Getting married, having children and moving house
Listeners: Walter J. Bock
Walter J. Bock is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Columbia University. He received his B.Sc. from Cornell and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. His research lies in the areas of organismal and evolutionary biology, with a special emphasis on functional and evolutionary morphology of the skeleto-muscular system, specifically the feeding apparatus of birds.
Tags: New York, International House, New York, Wheaton College, 05-1935, Freiberg, Germany, Upper Manhattan, Tenafly, New Jersey
Duration: 1 minute, 45 seconds
Date story recorded: October 1997
Date story went live: 24 January 2008