James Bond (Ornithologist)

James Bond (January 4, 1900February 14, 1989) was an American ornithologist and the namesake of the fictional spy James Bond.

Bio

Bond was born in Philadelphia and worked as an ornithologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in that city, rising to become curator of birds there. He was expert about Caribbean birds and wrote the definitive book, Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936 and, in its fifth edition, still in print (ISBN 0618002103). Ian Fleming, who was a keen bird watcher living in Jamaica, was familiar with Bond's book, and chose the name of its author for the hero of Casino Royale in 1953, apparently because he wanted a name that sounded 'as ordinary as possible'. Fleming wrote to the real Bond's wife, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born." In the twentieth James Bond film, Pierce Brosnan playing the fictional Bond, can be seen examining the book Birds of the West Indies in an early scene that takes place in Havana, Cuba.
   
Bond won the Institute of Jamaica's Musgrave Medal in 1952; the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists Union in 1954; and the Leidy Medal of the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1975. He died in the Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia at age 89.

References

  • The Associated Press. "James Bond, Ornithologist, 89; Fleming Adopted Name for 007." The New York Times. February 17, 1989. p. D19.
  • Kenneth C. Parkes. "In Memoriam: James Bond." Auk. Vol. 106. p. 718. (Available as a pdf here, with a photograph).

External links

A 1997 New York Times article on Ian Fleming refers to Bond as "the late ornithologist". Bond, James Bond, James (The Real One) Bond Bond

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
landsberg (district)
hodology
ignatius bonomi
garmarna
erratic ant
james l. dozier
projective representation
absolute sex
north atlantic oscillation
ementor
oliver joseph lodge
simonides
tunnel vision
family federation for world peace
revolutionary committee of the kuomintang
fatigue (material)
2004 tour de france
ibm at
eli biham
confessional poet
t. v. soong
erwin ratz
frederica of mecklenburg strelitz
british birds (magazine)
battle of lookout mountain
horace alexander
chuo kochi
dialects of the japanese language
1866 in science
diagonal lemma
iboga
melvin van peebles
antichain
lindemann weierstrass theorem
norwegian lundehund
jackie chan adventures
oliver and company
battle of artemisium
beethoven (movie)
yamashiro province
testimonial
jetsons: the movie
settsu province
david berkowitz