Burt Leavelle Monroe Jr. (25 August 1930 – 14 May 1994, in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...

) was an American ornithologist, a professor at the

University of Louisville The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public university, public research university in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. Chartered in 1798 as the Jefferson Seminary, it became in the 19t ...

, a member of the

American Ornithologists' Union The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

(AOU) beginning in 1953. Among his major contributions to avian taxonomy was the work with Charles Sibley resulting in the so-called Sibley-Monroe classification.

Biography

Monroe was born in Louisville to Ethelmae Tuell and Burt Leavelle Monroe Sr. (1901–1968). Like his father, he too took an interest in birds as well as a wider interest in natural history and published his first note on short-eared owls in 1945. He obtained a bachelor's degree in biology at the University of Louisville and then joined the US Navy from 1953 to 1959 rising to become a Lieutenant and working as a flight instructor at Pensacola. He then joined the Louisiana State University and worked on expeditions to collect birds in Honduras. This led also to his doctoral dissertation on the birds of Honduras (1965) under

George Lowery George Hines Lowery Jr. (October 2, 1913 – January 19, 1978) was an American ornithologist and professor of zoology at Louisiana State University, who pioneered a technique for studying nocturnal bird migration by large-scale observation throu ...

. He married fellow student Rose Sawyer. In 1965 he became assistant professor of biology at the University of Louisville and headed the department from 1970. After seeing his father die from a heart attack during an audit of the AOU, he took up in 1968 the role of treasurer. He became part of the Checklist Committee in 1977. In 1983 he worked with

Charles Sibley Charles Gald Sibley (August 7, 1917 – April 12, 1998) was an American ornithologist and molecular biologist. He had an immense influence on the scientific classification of birds, and the work that Sibley initiated has substantially altered our u ...

on DNA-DNA hybridization to work out the classification of birds resulting in the landmark publication ''Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of the World (1990)''. He published ''A World Checklist of Bird'' in 1993. His last book ''The Birds of Kentucky'' was published posthumously in 1994. He died from cancer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Monroe, Burt American ornithologists 1930 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American zoologists Scientists from Louisville, Kentucky University of Louisville faculty