Martin Humphrey Moynihan (5 February 1928 – 3 December 1996) was a behavioral

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life for ...

and ornithologist who studied under Ernst Mayr and

Niko Tinbergen Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen (; ; 15 April 1907 – 21 December 1988) was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the or ...

, and was a contemporary of

Desmond Morris Desmond John Morris FLS ''hon. caus.'' (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book '' The Naked Ape'', and for his televis ...

. He was the founding director of the

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI, es, Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales) is located in Panama and is the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States. It is dedicated to understa ...

(STRI) in

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

. His early research was mainly on

seagulls Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns and skimmers and only distantly related to auks, and even more distantly to waders. Until the 21st century, ...

. Later work included the octopus, and

Terence McKenna Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including ...

quotes Moynihan in his book ''Food of the Gods'' as saying, with respect to the octopus' ability to change its body's shape, texture and color, "Like the octopi, our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts." He was married to Olga F. Linares, a Panamanian-American anthropologist and STRI senior research scientist. Moynihan died in Albi, France in 1996 of

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, malign ...

, aged 68.

References

External links

Martin H. Moynihan Papers, 1952–1996
from the

Smithsonian Institution Archives Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institution ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moynihan, Martin H. 1928 births 1996 deaths Evolutionary biologists Ethologists Princeton University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Smithsonian Institution people Deaths from lung cancer American ornithologists Horace Mann School alumni 20th-century American zoologists Scientists from New York (state)

References

Further reading

External links