| Historical Notes |
Philip Atkinson DuMont was born on July 9th, 1903 in Rochester, Minnesota, however the DuMont family soon moved to Des Moines, Iowa. After graduating high school, DuMont started classes at Drake University. After graduation DuMont started working for the Ornithology Department of the Museum of Natural History. DuMont left the position in 1931 to attend graduate school for the University of California, Berkley. Near the end of 1932 he returned to Iowa to work and take classes at the University of Iowa, and then began to work for the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service. In 1924 DuMont joined the Iowa Ornithologist’s Union, and continued to be a member for 72 years. Over the course of his career, DuMont studied birds in all 50 United States, parts of Mexico, South America, Europe, East Africa, and Madagascar. DuMont also published 70 articles on Iowa birds between 1929 and 1936, and wrote “A Revised List of the Birds of Iowa”. While living and working in South Dakota, DuMont banded 16,453 birds from 93 different species in one year and started the largest waterfowl refuge in South Dakota, now known as the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge. In 1939 DuMont and his family moved to Washington D.C., where he worked as the Administrative Assistant to the chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System, and then went on to be the Chief of the Branch of Interpretation of the Fish and Wildlife Service. After retiring from the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1972, DuMont and his wife Jean moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1986 where they lived until his death on February 12th, 1996. |
