James Cowan Greenway (April 7, 1903 – June 10, 1989) was an American ornithologist. An eccentric, shy, and often reclusive man, his survey of extinct and vanishing birds provided the base for much subsequent work on bird conservation.
Early years
Greenway was born in New York City, though grew up on the Lauder Greenway Estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, with his brothers G. Lauder Greenway and Gilbert Greenway, as the son of James Greenway Sr., founder of the Yale School of Public Health. He is also a grandson of George Lauder and a great-grandson of George Lauder, Sr. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1922, and graduated from Yale University in 1926 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then worked for a few years as a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.
Expeditions and research
Expeditions with Delacour
In 1929 Greenway became a partner in the Franco-Anglo-American Zoological Expedition to Madagascar. The expedition was sponsored by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, the British Natural History Museum in London, and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, and led by French ornithologist Jean Delacour. Greenway took part in the expedition from April to August 1929, after which he and Delacour left Madagascar for Delacour's fifth expedition to Indochina, where they collected zoological specimens in Tonkin and Annam.
At some point during his expedition to Annam, Greenway was awarded the Order of the Dragon of Annam by the local authorities. Later in the expedition deep inside the Kingdom of Laos, he was awarded the Order of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol in Luang Prabang. Presumably by King Sisavang Vong himself. When asked about the circumstances of the awards later, he responded: "Any outsider who even got to those places got a medal in those days."
Museum of Comparative Zoology
In 1932 Greenway joined the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University as Assistant Curator of Birds until 1952 and then, succeeding James Lee Peters, as Curator until 1960. During the 1930s he participated in several collecting expeditions to the Caribbean, especially the Bahamas. In 1936, he and his brother Gilbert flew across the Bahamas from north to south, and were the first to land a plane on East Caicos in the Turks and Caicos Islands; the school children were let out of school for the special occasion. Greenway also took part in Delacour's seventh expedition to Indochina in 1938–1939.
Greenway, who broke from academia and research during his service in WWII, resumed his ornithological work at the MCZ. It was from there that he produced in 1958 his survey of extinct and near-extinct birds, a book that provided a great stimulus to bird conservation over the next few decades. He was also active in the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection and later in the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP).
American Museum of Natural History
In 1960 Greenway left the MCZ for personal reasons, never to return there. Based back at his Greenwich estate, his subsequent ornithological work was carried out in association with the American Museum of Natural History, of which he was a trustee from 1960/61 to 1970/71. In 1962 he became a research associate in the Department of Ornithology there, a position he retained until his death. He began work on a list of the type specimens of birds held by the museum, a massive project not completed at the time of his death. He also instigated, part-financed and participated in a collecting expedition to New Caledonia in 1978, when he was 75 years old.
Relatively few other ornithologists had met him in person because an aversion to large gatherings meant that he probably never attended a single professional meeting or congress in his life. His sometime friend and colleague François Vuilleumier wrote of him:
Shy and retiring he was, but his life and career, or at least what can be traced of them, were at times quite adventuresome. Jim Greenway was so reluctant to leave tracks behind him that, after his death, even his sons did not know important details of their father's academic career.