Who was Loye H Miller?

Answer 1

Loye H. Miller was born 1874 in Minden Louisiana. He died in 1970. He moved to California in 1877. He personally described 42 species, mostly from California. He worked his way through U.C. Berkeley, earning a B.S. in chemistry in 1898, a M.S. in zoology in 1904 (with a thesis on salamanders), and a Ph.D. in 1912 (with a thesis on fossil birds). In 1906 Professor John C. Merriam introduced Miller to excavations being conducted by the University of California at Rancho La Brea. He described several extinct birds from the asphalt beds including a stork, turkey, condor, two teratorns, and several raptors.

In 1902-3 he taught at Oahu College in Hawaii, now Punahou School, where President Obama went.

In 1914 Miller was appointed an Instructor in Biology at Los Angeles Normal School. This school eventually became the University of California Southern Branch and then U.C.L.A., and he eventually became a full professor and Chairman of the Biology Department.

He published some 200 articles between 1893 and 1968. Over half were studies of modern wildlife: hummingbird sounds, the roosting schedule of sparrow hawks, bluebird breeding in Los Angeles, the coat color of moles, duties of a park naturalist, etc. Long before the advent of paleobiology, Miller had happily melded together fossils with biology.

Besides the birds from Rancho La Brea, Miller also described bird fossils from middle Miocene Sharktooth Hill in Kern County, a new species of Lucas Auk (Mancalla diegensis) from the Pliocene of San Diego, and an extinct flightless duck (Chendytes lawi) from the Southern California Pleistocene. The latter species is now known to have survived until a few thousand years ago in the Monterey Bay area where it was dined on by Native Americans.

He retired in 1943.

He was president of the board of governors, Cooper Ornithological Club

He was Professor Emeritus at UC Davis until the 1970. He had office hours and walked to work most days of the week. Miller imitated bird songs and calls, and made recordings of them. In great demand as a lecturer and promoter of National Parks, Professor Miller instituted nature guide services in Yosemite in 1921, to encourage nature study.

The Loye and Alden Miller Research Award was established in 1993 by the Cooper Ornithological Society (COS) to recognize lifetime achievement in ornithological research.