John Wilson Foster

John Wilson Foster was born and educated in Belfast, received a PhD from the University of Oregon, and spent his teaching and research career at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is currently an honorary research professor at Queen’s University of Belfast. He has been an amateur ornithologist on both sides of the Atlantic for several decades and became intrigued by the extraordinary life and death of the passenger pigeon in 1990. Among Foster’s books are Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History and The Age of Titanic: Cross-currents in Anglo-American Culture.

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