astronomy

Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr.

Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. rather than just read about it. In short: Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. (December 16, 1915 – February 11, 2008) was an American ornithologist.

Key takeaways

Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. (December 16, 1915 – February 11, 2008) was an American ornithologist. He was the son of Chicago banker Melvin Alvah Traylor and Mrs. Dorothy Y. Traylor. Traylor was Lieutenant with the marines and served on Guadalcanal during World War II in 1942 where he was awarded with the Silver Star medal. As a Marine Corps officer, Mel was severely injured during the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific theatre, where he lost one eye and suffered arm and upper body wounds during the famous beach assault. After the war Traylor continued his work for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which he had started in 1937. He made expeditions to Africa (in collaboration with Austin L. Rand), to South America, and to Asia. In 1960 he was among the members of the World Book Encyclopedia Scientific Expedition to the Himalaya led by Sir Edmund Hillary. In 1956 Traylor became assistant curator of birds in the Field Museum. Since his retirement in the 1980s he was working as curator emeritus for the Field Museum. Traylor was among the authors (alongside Raymond A. Paynter, Ernst Mayr, G. William Cottrell, and James Lee Peters) of Check-list of Birds of the World, a standard reference work with sixteen volumes published between 1931 and 1987. Traylor described species like the Tana River cisticola and the Colombian screech-owl, and the genus Zimmerius. He made further revisions of the family Tyrannidae. The orange-eyed flycatcher (Tolmomyias traylori) is named in his honour. Traylor and Paynter were awarded with the Elliott Coues Award by the American Ornithologists' Union in 2001.

Publications (selected) 1947: Subspecies of Aratinga acuticaudata (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 31, part 21; Pub. no.608) 1948: New Birds from Peru and Ecuador (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 31, part 24; Pub. no.619) 1949: Notes on Some Veracruz Birds (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 31, part 32; Pub. no.635) 1951: Notes on Some Peruvian Birds (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 31, part 51; Pub. no.676) 1952: Notes on Birds from the Marcapata Valley, Cuzco, Peru (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 34, part 3; Pub. no.691) 1958: Birds of Northeastern Peru (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 35, part 5; Pub. no.844) 1959: Three New Birds from West Africa (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 39, part 25; Pub. no.865) (with A. L. Rand) 1961: Notes on Nepal Birds (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 35, part 8; Pub. no.917) 1962: New Birds from Barotseland (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 44, part 12; Pub. no.955) 1964: Further Notes on Nepal Birds (Chicago Natural History Museum) 1967: A Collection of Birds from Szechwan, 1967 (Chicago Natural History Museum, Fieldiana: Zoology, Volume 53, Number 1: pages 1–67 with 1 map figure) 1967: Collection of Birds from the Ivory Coast (Fieldiana. Zoology: Volume 51, part 7; Pub. no.1033) 1968: Distributional Notes on Nepal Birds, 1968 (Chicago Natural History Museum, Fieldiana: Zoology, Volume 53, Number 3: pages 147–203) 1977: A Classification of the Tyrant Flycatchers (Tyrannidae), 1977 (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Volume 148, Number 4: pages 129–184 with 10 figures and 4 tables) 1977: Ornithological Gazetteer of Ecuador (with Raymond A. Paynter) 1982: Notes on Tyrant Flycatchers (Aves: Tyrannidae) (Fieldiana. New Series Zoology: Volume 13; Pub. no.1338) 1988: Geographic Variation and Evolution in South American Cistothorus platensis (Aves: Troglodytidae) (Fieldiana. New Series Zoology: Volume 48; Pub. no.1392)

References

External links History - The Zoological Department of the Field Museum Nancy Traylor Falls to Death in New York (with a short note about Traylor's time on Guadalcanal) "Elliott Coues Award, 2001: Raymond A. Paynter, Jr., and Melvin A Traylor, Jr". Auk (journal). January 2002. Archived from the original on June 27, 2006 – via FindArticles. Chicago Tribune Obituary Chicago Tribune News Obituary

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr.

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr.

In research: Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1915 births, 2008 deaths, 20th-century American male writers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. in simple terms?

Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. (December 16, 1915 – February 11, 2008) was an American ornithologist.

Why does Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr.?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr..