Frank A. Pitelka (1916–2003)

Although the biological lore of Arctic Alaska had many early contributors, our biological knowledge of the North Slope grew exponentially after 1947, when the U.S. Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL) was established at a navy base just north of Barrow, Alaska.Among the many distinguished scientists who have since studied the biota of the North Slope of Alaska, none has contributed more to our understanding of the distribution, abundance, and behavior of terrestrial mammals and birds than Frank A. Pitelka.During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, he not only led major research projects of his own but also recruited a substantial coterie of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to work in Arctic tundra.Born on 27 March 1916 and raised in Berwyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Pitelka came from a family of Czech immigrants and spoke Czech at every opportunity throughout his life.His development as a biologist began in elementary school, when he began to take bird walks with his teacher.As his interests in birds gathered momentum during high school, he found a mentor in Mrs. Nellie J. Baroody, who was active in the Illinois Audubon Society.Upon graduation he wanted to go university to begin his formal training as a biologist, but the Great Depression and the need to earn money stood in his way.While employed at General Electric, he managed to take courses at a local two-year college (Morton Junior College in Cicero, Illinois) and finally entered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1937, at age 21.Because he was an older, dedicated student who had already begun publishing his observations on birds, he soon caught the attention of two eminent ecologists then at Illinois, Victor E. Shelford and S. Charles Kendeigh.He became Kendeigh's research assistant and continued to publish papers.As a result of these activities, he shared an office with graduate students, one of whom was no less than Eugene Odum, a PhD student of Kendeigh at that time.After graduation in 1939 (summa cum laude with a double major in zoology and chemistry), Pitelka arranged to start a doctoral program at the University of California at Berkeley with another prominent ecologist, Joseph Grinnell, the founding director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ).Unfortunately, Grinnell unexpectedly died of a heart attack, so Pitelka needed to find another sponsor, and he became the student of Alden Miller, a prominent ornithologist and the new director of MVZ.Under Miller's guidance, Pitelka's interests took a turn toward evolution and systematics.During World War II, presumably because of a medical deferment from military service, Pitelka continued his doctoral work on jays in the genus Aphelocoma.He published a series of papers and received his PhD in 1946.His work on jays culminated in a monograph published by the University of California.His publication record shows that he continued his interest in ecology and behavior,

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