Robert Ridgway

Ornithologist, born in Mount Carmel, Illinois, USA. At age nine he was making coloured drawings of birds he shot. He was the protégé of the zoologist Spencer Baird, who when he became secretary of the Smithsonian Institution appointed Ridgway curator of birds at the US National Museum (1880–1929). He undertook field studies, but it was his writings that gained him the reputation as the country's leading ornithologist. He systematized the colour system for bird identification and wrote Color Standards and Nomenclature (1886, 1912) and The Birds of North and Middle America (8 vols, 1901–19).

Robert Ridgway (July 2, 1850 - March 25, 1929) was an American ornithologist.

Born in Mount Carmel, Illinois, Ridgway was a protege of zoologist Spencer Fullerton Baird, who, on becoming the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, appointed Ridgway the first full-time curator of birds at the U.S. National Museum. Ridgway also published one of the first and most important color system for bird identification, with his 1886 book A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists (Boston: Little, Brown & Ornithologists all over the world continue to cite Ridgway's color studies and books.

In the Spring of 1867, at the age of 16, Ridgway was hired as the naturalist on Clarence King's Survey of the 40th Parallel. In an undertaking that lasted nearly two years, Ridgway collected many bird specimens and served as a key member on one of the four great surveys of the American West. Although Ridgway had nothing more than a high school education, he was articulate and literate, and served as the Smithsonian's mouthpiece and representative for many years in the study of birds. They had one son, Audubon Whelock Ridgway, who died tragically of pneumonia in 1901 while working at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Ridgway was the joint author (with Thomas Mayo Brewer and Spencer Fullerton Baird) of History of North American Birds (Boston, 1875-1884;

Robert Ridgway's brother, John Livzey Ridgway (1859-1947) was an illustrator.

Birds named for Ridgway include the Ridgway's Whip-Poor-Will Caprimulgus ridgwayi and the Aztec Thrush Ridgwayia pinicola.