Austin L. Rand

Who was Austin L. Rand?

Austin Loomer Rand was a Canadian zoologist.

He was born in Kentville, Nova Scotia in 1905 and grew up in nearby Wolfville, where he was mentored by the noted local ornithologist Robie W. Tufts. He received a Bachelor of Science from Acadia University, an institution which also awarded him an honorary DSc degree in 1961.

In 1929, while still a graduate student at Cornell University, he travelled on an expedition to Madagascar as collector of birds. Rand published the results as his thesis for his Ph.D.. It was on this expedition that he met Richard Archbold, zoologist and philanthropist, with whom he became a lifelong friend. Archbold subsequently financed and led a series of biological expeditions to New Guinea in the 1930s in which Rand participated and co-led. In 1941 he assisted Archbold in the establishment of the Archbold Biological Station at Lake Placid, Florida, a place he eventually retired to.

In 1942, Rand became assistant zoologist at the National Museum of Canada, now the Canadian Museum of Nature, where he worked with ornithologist Percy A. Taverner and mammologist Rudolph Martin Anderson. From 1947 to 1955, he was curator of birds at the Field Museum in Chicago and was chief Curator of Zoology there from 1955 to 1970.