William Beebe - Personality and Cultural Image

Personality and Cultural Image

William Beebe was more famous in the United States than any other American naturalist prior to the days of television. As a scientific writer who participated in both the popular and academic worlds, he occupied a similar role to the role later occupied by Stephen Jay Gould. Beebe was a well-known figure in the Roaring Twenties of New York City, and was friends with numerous other well-known figures of the period, including Fannie Hurst and the cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Although he was not physically handsome in the traditional sense, he tended to dominate every social and professional situation due to his enthusiasm, intelligence and charisma. As a result of his much-publicized divorce from Blair and his later marriage to Elswyth, he was also known for his stormy relationships with women.

Beebe described his religious beliefs as a combination of Presbyterianism and Buddhism. His religion was largely the result of seeking to combine his sense of awe and wonder at the natural world with a scientific understanding of its workings. He was highly critical of efforts to use science to justify political ideologies, such as socialism or the belief that women were inferior to men. Beebe also disapproved of the eugenic ideas advocated by many biologists in the early 20th century, including some of his contemporaries at the zoo, although this was largely out of fear that these ideas would alienate friends of the zoo and cause divisions among its staff.

Beebe was an avid player of tennis, and remained skilled enough to beat others at it even in his early seventies. Other pastimes enjoyed by him included parties, theater, dancing, and occasionally cinema.

Beebe had a troubled relationship with some of his superiors at the zoo, particularly Hornaday, who was resentful of Beebe's constant demands for more funding and staff, as well as the fact that as Beebe's career progressed he gradually devoted less and less time to caring for the zoo itself. One particular point of disagreement was Beebe's forgetfulness about returning books which he had borrowed from the Zoological Society's Library, which would occasionally go missing for years as a result. However, Hornaday never publicly expressed his disagreements with Beebe, and did not hesitate to defend Beebe's work when others criticized it.

Beebe had high expectations of the people working under him on all of his expeditions, although he never revealed the exact characteristics that he looked for in potential employees. Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. recounts one incident in which Beebe turned down a scientist who wished to work with him when the scientist described boredom with his current duties as one of his reasons for requesting this. In response to this request, Beebe retorted:

Beebe nonetheless exhibited a high degree of loyalty to those employees who were capable of meeting his standards. When he felt that pressure of working under him had become too great, he would announce that his birthday was approaching, and his staff would have several days free from work in order to celebrate it. One one such occasion, when a scientist working under Beebe whispered to him that he knew it was not in fact Beebe's birthday, Beebe responded "A man should have a birthday when he needs one."