Sidney Dillon Ripley

Sidney Dillon Ripley (20 September 1913 - 12 March 2001 ) was an American ornithologist. He was born in New York City.

He studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and in 1936 he graduated with a B.A. from Yale University. His great-grandfather, Sidney Dillon, was the founding chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad. A visit to India at age 13, along with his sister, included a walking tour into Ladakh and western Tibet. This led to his lifelong interest in the ornithology of India. He decided that birds were more interesting than law, and he began studying zoology at Columbia University. He later obtained a Ph.D. in zoology from Harvard in 1943.

He served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1964 to 1984. The S. Dillon Ripley Center was named in his honor.

During World War II, he joined service in the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was in charge of American intelligence services in Southeast Asia. After the war he taught at Yale and was a Fulbright fellow in 1950 and a Guggenheim fellow in 1954. He became a full professor and director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

He joined the AOU in 1938, became an Elective Member in 1942, and a fellow in 1951. In 1985 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award. He was awarded honorary degrees from 15 colleges and universities, including Brown, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Cambridge in the U.K..

Ripley served for many years on the board of the World Wildlife Fund in the U.S., and was the third president of the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP, now BirdLife International).