Planning to travel when you retire? Where would you go? Forty-two years after starting his science career in ornithology and avian paleontology, Wetmore retired from his position as Secretary of the Smithsonian to more fully devote himself to the science he loved. This photograph album documents Alexander Wetmore's work in Panama in 1954, including visits to the Canal Zone Biological Area and specimen collecting in Chiriqui together with Beatrice Thielen Wetmore and others.
Join other digital volunteers in transcribing the captions in this album and see a wide range of topics including shorelines, forests and vegetation, volcano vistas, Panamanian staff and families, lodgings, and modes of transportation used.
Planning to travel when you retire? Where would you go? Forty-two years after starting his science career in ornithology and avian paleontology, Wetmore retired from his position as Secretary of the Smithsonian to more fully devote himself to the science he loved. This photograph album documents Alexander Wetmore's work in Panama in 1954, including visits to the Canal Zone Biological Area and specimen collecting in Chiriqui together with Beatrice Thielen Wetmore and others.
Join other digital volunteers in transcribing the captions in this album and see a wide range of topics including shorelines, forests and vegetation, volcano vistas, Panamanian staff and families, lodgings, and modes of transportation used.
Alexander Wetmore (1886-1978) was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. A well-known ornithologist and avian paleontologist, Wetmore served as Secretary from 1945 to 1952. Wetmore came to the Smithsonian in November 1924 as Superintendent of the National Zoological Park after a fourteen-year career with the Bureau of Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture. In March 1925, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian in charge of the United States National Museum (USNM), a post he held until his appointment as Secretary in 1945. Wetmore retired in 1952 and was made an honorary Research Associate of the Smithsonian, where he continued his study of recent and fossil birds until his death.