Peter Paul Kellogg

December 13, 1899 — January 31, 1975

Peter Paul Kellogg, professor emeritus of ornithology and bioacoustics, died of cancer in Houston, Texas, on January 31, 1975. Born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, he moved to Rochester, New York, at the age of four. When he was fourteen, he left school and worked, successively, in a shoe factory, as a Western Union messenger, and as a meat-market clerk. At the age of twenty-two he returned to high school to prepare for college, supporting himself during this period with a full-time job in a coal-gas plant at night. He entered Cornell in 1925 and received his B.S. degree in 1929, at the age of thirty. He promptly enrolled as a graduate student in ornithology under Arthur A. Allen, and received his Ph.D. degree in 1938. Having held the position of instructor in ornithology during his graduate years, he was appointed an assistant professor as soon as he completed his doctorate in 1938. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1946, and was named a full professor in 1953. He officially retired from Cornell with emeritus status in 1966, though in recent years he taught ornithology courses in Cornell’s summer Alumni University.

Professor Kellogg was best known for his work in recording and analyzing bird songs and other natural sounds. Not content merely to use established techniques in his work, he devoted much of his effort to developing better equipment for field work in bioacoustics. For example, he and a student, Peter Keane, developed in 1932 in the basement of McGraw Hall the first parabolic reflector for use in the field recording of natural sounds, after having seen a photograph of a reflector being used in a theater to catch the voices of the actors on stage. Later he worked with N. M. Haynes of the Amplifier Corporation of America in the development of the first commercially produced field tape recorder, which was marketed in 1951. This tape recorder was promptly adopted by most investigators in natural history recording and thus greatly expanded the possibilities for work in this area of biology.

Dr. Kellogg participated in several important expeditions for the purpose of recording bird songs. To mention only a few of these, he and Dr. Allen visited many parts of the United States in 1935 to record the voices of species of birds that were threatened with extinction. In 1939 he and Allen made a trip to the Pacific Coast and to Arizona to record birds. In 1961 he participated in an expedition to the Orinoco Basin in eastern Venezuela. At various other times he made field trips to East Africa, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

During World War II Dr. Kellogg temporarily left Cornell, first to organize and direct a radar school for the

Western Electric Company and later to investigate acoustical problems of jungles for the U.S. Army. The latter

work was carried out in Panama in 1944-45.
Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement

http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/17813

Through the joint efforts of Professors Allen and Kellogg, Cornell became known as one of the principal centers for ornithological education and research in the United States. These two men were especially concerned with the importance of disseminating ornithological knowledge to the interested public at a time when the great stress on conservation education that we know today did not yet exist. This interest of theirs led in 1955 to the establishment of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, with Professors Allen and Kellogg officially recognized as cofounders. A new building for the laboratory was erected and a sanctuary established in the Sapsucker Woods area, a few miles northeast of the main campus. The facility was dedicated in 1957. Dr. Kellogg became a life member of the Administrative Board of the Laboratory of Ornithology, and he also served until his retirement as assistant director of the laboratory.
One of Dr. Kellogg’s principal activities in the laboratory was the establishment of the Library of Natural Sounds, which today includes recordings of songs or calls of about one-quarter of the world’s species of birds, as well as recordings of amphibians and other animals. This facility is used not only by Cornell students and faculty but also by investigators at many other institutions.
The first published phonograph record of wild bird songs was produced at Cornell by Albert R. Brand in 1932, while Kellogg was a graduate student. Dr. Kellogg became very much interested in the production of such records, and over the years he produced a succession of recordings including “American Bird Songs,” “Voices of the Night,” “Bird Songs in Your Garden,” “Dawn in a Duck Blind,” and “Field Guide to Bird Songs,” which accompanied Peterson’s well-known Field Guide to Birds. These recordings became very widely known and contributed substantially to Cornell’s reputation in ornithology. Proceeds from their sale became a major source of financial support to the Laboratory of Ornithology. There is every indication that their popularity with the public and their importance to the laboratory will continue for many years to come.
For nearly thirty years Dr. Kellogg’s voice was familiar to radio listeners throughout the Finger Lakes Region through his production of the weekly program “Know Your Birds” on WHCU. This program will celebrate its fortieth anniversary in the fall of 1975. It is the longest continuously running radio program in the United States. The interest in ornithology and in conservation that it will surely continue to generate will serve as a memorial to Dr. Kellogg’s many contributions to the study of birds.
Douglas Lancaster, W. T. Keeton

Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement

http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/17813