Rollo Beck

Rollo Howard Beck (26 August 1870 – 22 November 1950) was an American ornithologist, bird collector for museums, and explorer.Beck's petrel and a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra becki from Volcán Wolf, are named after him. A recent paper by Fellers examines all the known taxa named for Beck. Beck was recognized for his extraordinary ability as a field worker by Robert Cushman Murphy as being "in a class by himself," and by University of California at Berkeley professor of zoology Frank Pitelka as "the field worker" of his generation.

Rollo Howard Beck was born in Los Gatos, California, and grew up in Berryessa working on apricot and prune orchards. He completed only an 8th grade education, but took an early interest in natural history, trapping gophers after school on neighborhood farms. One of his neighbors, Frank H. Holmes, was a good friend of the ornithologist Theodore Sherman Palmer. Palmer also introduced Beck to Charles Keeler, who studied birdlife of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Beck learned about upland birds hunting quail with Holmes. Beck’s interest and knowledge of birds grew, and he soon learned how to make ornithological specimens and mount birds for museum collections. He joined the American Ornithologists' Union in 1894, and was among the first members of the newly formed Cooper Ornithological Society which formed in San Jose, California. He participated in early ornithological expeditions to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe with Holmes and Wilfred Hudson Osgood, and collected and helped describe the first eggs and nests of the western evening grosbeak and hermit warbler.

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