Robert Allen Norris

Robert Allen Norris (16 December 1922 – 5 September 2010) was an American ornithologist. After service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he graduated from the University of Georgia with a Master of Science degree in 1949. He then entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned Ph.D. in 1954. In 1958, he became the full-time resident ecologist at the Savannah River Plant in Georgia. In later life he became interested in botany and assembled a herbarium with 10,000 specimens of southern Georgia plants. He donated this to Georgia Southwestern State University, and became its curator.

Biography Robert Allen Norris was born on December 16, 1922, in Waycross, Georgia, the son of Robert P. and Nell Marie Norris.

After graduating from Fitzgerald High School, Norris briefly attended Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, then began his studies at the University of Georgia in 1942. His academic studies were put on hold due to World War II, during which he spent three years in the U.S. Navy, serving in the Pacific, including participating in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

While in California, Norris also wrote a 51-page chapter on the "Physiographic & Biogeographic Regions of Georgia with Special Reference to the Distribution of Breeding Birds" for Thomas D. Burleigh's book on Georgia Birds. He was awarded the Ecological Society of America's Mercer Award for 1961 for his research paper on "Density, racial composition, sociality, and selective predation in nonbreeding populations of Savannah sparrows". His wife Vivian had died before him.