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 understanding of the evolutionary history of modern birds.

Sibley's taxonomy has been a major influence on the sequences adopted by ornithological organizations, especially the American Ornithologists' Union.

Life and work Educated in California (A.B. 1940; Ph.D. 1948 in Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. Minor fields: Paleontology, Botany), he did his first fieldwork in Mexico in 1939 and 1941, then in Solomon Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, New Guinea, and the Philippines during World War II while on leave from the U.S. Navy, in which he was Ensign to Lieutenant in the Communications and Medical Service Corps. He was based for much of the war at Emirau Island, in what is now New Ireland Province of Papua New Guinea. His first job after college was from 1948 to 1949 as instructor in Zoology and Curator of Birds, University of Kansas, followed from 1949 to 1953 as assistant professor of zoology, San Jose State College, California. From 1953 to 1965 he was associate professor then Professor of Zoology and director of the ornithological laboratory at Cornell. Between 1965 and 1986 he was Professor of Biology and William Robertson Coe Prof. of Ornithology, Dept of Biology; and Curator of Birds at the Peabody Museum at Yale. From 1986 to 1992 he was Dean's Professor of Science and Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, and from 1993 until his death he was adjunct professor of biology at Sonoma State University.

Sibley developed an interest in hybridization and its implications for evolution and taxonomy and, in the early 1960s he began to focus on molecular studies: of blood proteins, and then the electrophoresis of egg-white proteins.

By the early 1970s Sibley was pioneering DNA–DNA hybridization studies, with the aim of discovering, once and for all, the true relationships between the modern orders of birds. These were highly controversial to begin with, and regarded by colleagues as anything from snake-oil salesmanship on the one hand to Holy Writ on the other. He was elected President of the International Ornithological Congress in 1990. His landmark publications, Phylogeny and Classification of Birds (written with Ahlquist) and Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of the World (with Burt Monroe) are among the most-cited of all ornithological works, the former setting out the influential Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy.

Personality During the 1970s, Sibley was a highly controversial figure in ornithological circles, for both professional and personal reasons. His friend Richard Schodde, writing Sibley's obituary in Emu, commented that he was: