John Wilson Foster was born and educated in Belfast, received a PhD from theUniversity of Oregon, and spent his teaching and research career at the Universityof British Columbia, Vancouver. He is currently an honorary research professorat Queen's University of Belfast. He has been an amateur ornithologist on bothsides of the Atlantic for several decades and became intrigued by the extraordinarylife and death of the passenger pigeon in 1990. Among Foster's books are Naturein Ireland- A Scientific and Cultural History and The Age of Titanic- Cross-currents inAnglo-American Culture.