I first met Tom when I interviewed for a job with him in late 1980, having been introduced by another longtime Linnaean member, Roger Pasquier. Like Tom, I was a native New Yorker, and had fallen in love with birds at Jamaica Bay and in Central Park. I met him at his family’s office in New York City, and within a second we both chuckled as we realized we were wearing identical blue Brooks Brothers suits. First impressions do count, and I was hired.
Born and raised in New York City, Thomas Lovejoy joined the Linnaean Society in 1961. He transcended his ornithological interests to become one of the most noted conservationists of our times. Tom, as he was known, became interested in birds as a child, but when he went to Millbrook School up the Hudson River, his broader intellectual curiosity in the biotic world was sparked. After Millbrook, he went to Yale, worked in the Peabody Museum as an undergrad, and even wandered off for a year to study birds along the Nile. Graduating in 1964, he stayed on for graduate work. He visited the Amazon to research avian migrants and fell in love with its magnificent flora and fauna. He then focused on the resident avian species and pioneered mist-netting in the Amazon’s forest canopy. He received his PhD in 1971 for delving into the mathematics of diversity (Lovejoy, T.E. 1975. Bird Diversity and Abundance in Amazon Forest Communities. Living Bird 13:127-191). At Yale he also became quite close to Professor Evelyn Hutchinson, who built on Charles Elton‘s idea of an ecological niche, further refining it as “a highly abstract multi-dimensional hyperspace.” Evelyn, who studied nutrient cycling, was also one of the first proponents of the notion that an increase in carbon dioxide would lead to a global temperature increase.
At Yale, Tom also fell in love with and married another professor’s daughter, Charlotte Seymour. Her grandfather had been Yale’s president, and her father a distinguished art historian. Tom and Charlotte, who was known as Mopsy (from Beatrix Potter’s tales), started their family in New Haven. Tom remained an inveterate Yalie all his life, closely involved with its School of the Environment and later chairing the University’s Institute for Biospheric Studies, known as the Biosphere 2.
After New Haven, he moved to Washington D.C. with Charlotte to raise their family and begin a career in conservation, though they amicably divorced shortly thereafter. Throughout his career, Tom was a major proponent of three key issues: the loss of biological diversity, tropical deforestation, and climate change. Indeed, he coined the term biological diversity, which he later shortened to biodiversity. He brought each of these issues to the world’s attention through both his research and his ability to bring people together. While at the World Wildlife Fund, Tom started the incredibly ambitious Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project, now called the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project. In perhaps the largest study ever of forest fragmentation, Tom worked with the Brazilian government and local ranchers near Manaus to preserve forest plots of one hectare, 10 hectares, and 100 hectares that were isolated by surrounding grazing areas. He then raised the funds to bring in a host of North American and Brazilian scientists and students to study the effects of isolation on each plot’s flora and fauna (Lovejoy, T.E., and D.C. Oren. 1981. The minimum critical size of ecosystems. Pp. 7-12 in R.L. Burgess and D.M. Sharp, Eds. Forest Island Dynamics in Man Dominated Landscapes. Ecological Studies Vol. 41. Springer-Verlag; and Bierregaard, R. O. 2001. Lessons from Amazonia: The Ecology and Conservation of a Fragmented Forest. Yale University Press). The project, managed on site for its first eight years by Rob Bierregaard, was not only epic in scope, but brought a host of trained academicians to the Amazon and, as importantly, trained a generation of Brazilian biologists. Over the years this project and other facets of his work involved a number of Great Gull Islanders and Linnaean members, whom Tom relentlessly recruited for his projects.
As vice-president for science at the World Wildlife Fund–U.S. under Russell Train, who previously had headed the EPA, Tom also provided scientific reviews and recommendations on all the projects the organization considered funding. Among many many others, Tom ardently supported Russell Mittermeier’s work on primates and Anne Labastille’s efforts to protect and restore the Lake Atitlan Grebe. Reflecting Tom’s panache, her work on this highly endangered species was celebrated every July 14 (Bastille Day) in his office. He wrote copiously and spoke frequently, and was considered the consummate conservation host in the nation’s capital. Nearly every week, when he was not in Brazil or traveling elsewhere, Tom would pull together splendid but low-key dinners for visiting conservationists at his home, called Drover’s Rest, in McLean, Virginia. E.O. Wilson, Paul Ehrlich, Jared Diamond, George Woodwell, Jane Lubchenco, and many others were his guests. Following a tour of his splendid garden, filled with unusual and interesting plants, guests were treated to a table laden with good food and great wines, and a long comfortable evening spent plotting conservation strategies. Indeed, it was because of George Woodwell, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center (now known as the Woodwell Climate Research Center), that late one night in the early 1980s Tom’s interest in climate change was reignited. He pondered a graph that George shared, showing rising global atmospheric carbon levels, and, recollecting Evelyn’s work, soon began to promote an awareness of the ecological consequences (Climate Change and Biodiversity. Lovejoy & Hannah, Eds. 2006. Yale Univ. Press).
Long a great admirer and close friend of ornithologist Dillon Ripley, his professor at Yale and later secretary of the Smithsonian (1964-84), Tom himself had a hankering to work for the Smithsonian, and after his time at WWF, from 1987 until 1994, he was the assistant secretary for the environment there. He stayed on a bit longer as a senior scientist. Then, in 2002, he became president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. In recent years he was a professor at George Mason University, lecturing on biodiversity.
Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III was born to Thomas Jr. and Jeanne Gillette Lovejoy, their only child, in 1942. His grandfather had acquired the Manhattan Life Insurance Company in 1912, and his father was later its president. Throughout his life, Tom remained involved with the company and later chaired its board. Indeed, it is perhaps not surprising that New York City’s first re-introduced set of Peregrine Falcons were hacked off the company’s building on West 57th Street by Tom Cade. (https://www.audubon.org/news/remembering-tom-cade-father-peregrine-falcon-conservation)
Tom’s marriage to Charlotte ended in a divorce, but they remained close friends until she passed away in 2013. Tom and Charlotte are survived by their three daughters, Elizabeth, Katherine, and Anne, plus six grandchildren.
Throughout his career Tom was a prolific author (he edited 10 books and authored or co-authored 321 papers) and spoke tirelessly about the issues important to him, leveraging his charm to reach a wider audience. After working for him for several years, I came to think of him as Mother Nature’s elf on Earth—always smiling, self-deprecating, witty, welcoming, and immeasurably bright. Even amidst all his research and the need to raise funds and deal with the tentacles of bureaucracy, he still managed with his trademark effervescent joy and great aplomb to bring influential and politically connected people to the Amazon and to his side, including Walter Cronkite, Tom Cruise, Ben Bradlee, and Al Gore. Tom always danced on the edge of politics and science—even, in the 1980s, coming up with the notion of nature-for-debt swaps as a way for wealthy nations to fund nature preserves in developing countries, an idea being replicated currently in the form of carbon tax credits. Not surprisingly, Tom received a number of accolades for all his great work, including election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the U.S. National Academy of Science. He was also awarded USC’s Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Blue Planet Prize.
Tom was a frequent visitor to NYC and attended the Society’s banquet in 2020. Deep down, I will dare say, he was always a New Yorker at heart—bright, energetic, and competitive….just don’t tell his great circle of Washington friends.
— Alexander Brash