Albert Wolfson, 85, a longtime Northwestern University professor and award-winning ornithologist who studied the migratory and mating habits of birds, died of pancreatic cancer Thursday, Feb. 14, in Highland Park Hospital.
He greatly advanced the study of birds during his 45 years as a college educator and researcher, establishing how they know when to migrate as well as how they prepare themselves for those flights.
In his research, which employed large indoor cages filled with birds, Mr. Wolfson found that birds have an internal clock that is tuned to the amount of daylight available.
As days grow longer during the winter months, birds prepare themselves for migration by fattening up so they have enough energy for their trip. When the days shorten, the birds fly south.
Mr. Wolfson also developed a theory on why birds migrate that is based on the continental drift. Birds once had to fly only a short distance between their breeding and wintering grounds, but their migratory routes grew longer as the continents spread apart. Those routes, he thought, coincided with the way the continents are believed to have drifted apart.
Mr. Wolfson was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where, as a Boy Scout, he became interested in birds and their migratory habits.
“I used to go into the field, and when I read in the manuals that one could expect to see a certain species on a certain date, it was incredible to me that it would be there within a few days of the date that was given,” he told the Tribune in 1968.
He continued his study of birds at Cornell University, where he graduated in 1937 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. Mr. Wolfson followed that with a PhD in zoology from the University of California in 1942.
He joined the Northwestern faculty in 1944 in what was then the zoology department and became a professor of biological sciences in 1957. Mr. Wolfson retired in 1987.
Mr. Wolfson was awarded the Brewster Memorial medal by the American Ornithologists’ Union, one of the highest honors in American ornithology.
Near the end of his teaching career at Northwestern, Mr. Wolfson taught a class he developed that incorporated the study of science and humanities, with the intention of attracting non-science majors. Those classes drew as many as 400 students per quarter and fit with his wide-ranging interests, his family said.
Mr. Wolfson was known for “exhaustively studying anything that caught his interest and sharing it with all his friends,” said his wife, Sylvia.
Mr. Wolfson also is survived by two sons, Gary Mayer and Robert; three daughters, Linda Rostrom, Jan Walker and Diane Istvan; three sisters, Tillie Langer, Bernice Riegelhaupt and Frieda Rosen; and five grandchildren. Services have been held.
