text:
List of ornithologists

This is a list of ornithologists who have articles, in alphabetical order by surname. See also Category:Ornithologists.

A

 * John Abbot – US
 * Clinton Gilbert Abbott – US
 * William Louis Abbott – US
 * Joseph H. Acklen – US
 * Humayun Abdulali – India
 * Jon E. Ahlquist – US
 * Prince Akishino (皇嗣秋筱宮文仁親王) – Japan
 * Luigi d'Albertis – Italy
 * John Warren Aldrich – US
 * Boyd Alexander – England
 * Christopher James Alexander – England
 * Horace Alexander – England, US
 * Wilfred Backhouse Alexander – England
 * Salim Ali – India
 * Arthur Augustus Allen – US
 * Elsa Guerdrum Allen – US
 * Glover Morrill Allen – US
 * Joel Asaph Allen – US
 * Robert Porter Allen – US
 * György Almásy – Hungary/Austria
 * Bernard Altum – Germany
 * Dean Amadon – US
 * George W. Archibald – Canada/US
 * John Ash – England
 * Edwin Ashby – Australia
 * Henry Philemon Attwater – England/Canada/US
 * Yves Aubry – Canada
 * Jean Victoire Audouin – France
 * John James Audubon – France/US
 * Oliver L. Austin – US
 * Félix de Azara - Spain

B

 * Walther Bacmeister – Germany
 * Alfred Marshall Bailey – US
 * Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey – US
 * Jean-Baptiste Bailly – France
 * Spencer Fullerton Baird – US
 * E. C. Stuart Baker – England
 * Russell Balda – US
 * August Carl Eduard Baldamus – Germany
 * Jean-Christophe Balouet – France
 * Vladimir Balthasar – Czech Republic
 * Betsy Bang – US
 * Outram Bangs – US
 * V. B. Banjkovski – Russia
 * Richard C. Banks – US
 * David Armitage Bannerman – UK
 * Phyllis Barclay-Smith – UK
 * Pierre Barrère – France
 * Richard Mancliffe Barrington – Ireland
 * Walter B. Barrows – US
 * George A. Bartholomew – US
 * Edward Bartlett – UK
 * William Bartram – US
 * Charles Foster Batchelder – US
 * George Latimer Bates – US
 * E. V. Baxter – Scotland
 * Robert Cecil Beavan – England
 * Johann Matthäus Bechstein – Germany
 * Rollo Beck – US
 * Jean-Baptiste Bécœur – France
 * William Beebe – US
 * Bruce Beehler – US
 * William H. Behle – US
 * Lyman Belding – US
 * Brian Bell – New Zealand
 * John Graham Bell – US
 * Lev Osipovich Belopolsky – USSR
 * Charles Bendire – US
 * Constantine Walter Benson – England
 * Arthur Cleveland Bent – US
 * Andrew John Berger – US
 * E. Alexander Bergstrom – US
 * Hans von Berlepsch – Germany
 * Grace Berlin – US
 * Jacques Berlioz - France
 * Victor Besaucèle – France
 * Thomas Bewick – England
 * Valentin Bianchi – Russia
 * Eugene P. Bicknell – US
 * Biswamoy Biswas – India
 * Gladys Black – US
 * Emmet Reid Blake – US
 * William Thomas Blanford – England
 * August Wilhelm Heinrich Blasius – Germany
 * Johann Heinrich Blasius – Germany
 * Rudolf Blasius – Germany
 * Edward Blyth – England
 * George Augustus Boardman – US/Canada
 * José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage – Portugal
 * Walter Joseph Bock (1933–2022) - US
 * Pieter Boddaert – Netherlands
 * Hans von Boetticher – Germany
 * Nikolay Boev – Bulgaria
 * Zlatozar Boev – Bulgaria
 * Friedrich Boie – Germany
 * Auguste Boissonneau – France
 * Charles Lucien Bonaparte – France
 * James Bond – US
 * Franco Andrea Bonelli – Italy
 * J. Lewis Bonhote – England (1875–1922)
 * Bernard Borggreve – Germany
 * José Ignacio Borrero – Cuba
 * Donald J. Borror – US
 * Adolphe Boucard – France
 * Jules Bourcier – France
 * Frank Swift Bourns – US
 * Louis Hippolyte Bouteille – France
 * Johann Friedrich von Brandt – Germany/Russia
 * Rex Brasher – US
 * Mark Brazil – England/Japan
 * Alfred Brehm – Germany
 * Christian Ludwig Brehm – Germany
 * Thomas Mayo Brewer – US
 * William Brewster – US
 * Mathurin Jacques Brisson – France
 * Pierce Brodkorb – US
 * Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke – England
 * Allan Brooks – Canada
 * William Edwin Brooks – Ireland/India
 * Herbert Brown – US
 * Nathan Clifford Brown – US
 * Thomas Browne – England
 * Carl Friedrich Bruch – Germany
 * Friedrich Brüggemann – Germany
 * Morten Thrane Brünnich – Denmark
 * William Alanson Bryan – US
 * Henry Bryant – US
 * Theodor Bühler-Lindenmeyer (1859–1899) – Switzerland
 * Walter Buller – New Zealand
 * William John Burchell – England
 * Hermann Burmeister – Germany
 * Edward H. Burtt Jr. – US
 * Arthur Lennox Butler – India/England
 * Edward Arthur Butler – England
 * Johann Büttikofer – Switzerland/Netherlands/Liberia
 * Sergei Buturlin – Russia

C

 * Jean Cabanis – Germany
 * Hélio Ferraz de Almeida Camargo – Brazil
 * Archibald James Campbell – Australia
 * Melbourne Armstrong Carriker – US
 * John Cassin – US
 * Montague Chamberlain – Canada/US
 * James Chapin – US
 * Frank Chapman – US
 * Frederick Nutter Chasen – England/Singapore
 * Robert Ernest Cheesman – England
 * Tso-hsin Cheng (郑作新) – China
 * George Kruck Cherrie – US/Costa Rica
 * John Lewis Childs – US
 * Glen Chilton – Canada/Australia
 * Leslie Christidis – Australia
 * Tadeusz Chrostowski – Poland
 * Charles Chubb – England
 * Phillip Clancey – South Africa
 * Austin Hobart Clark – US
 * Nigel Cleere – England
 * James Clements – US
 * Stanley Cobb – US
 * Herbert L. Coggins – US
 * Leon Jacob Cole – US
 * Peter Colston – UK
 * Herbert Thomas Condon – Australia
 * Boardman Conover – US
 * William G. Conway – US
 * Wells Cooke – US
 * Emilio Cornalia – Italy
 * Charles B. Cory – US
 * Elliott Coues – US
 * John Courtney – Australia
 * Lee Crandall – US
 * Philipp Jakob Cretzschmar – Germany
 * Maunsell Crosby – US
 * Georges Cuvier – France
 * Ede Czynk – Hungary

D

 * Roberto Dabbene – Italy/Argentina
 * François Marie Daudin – France
 * Priya Davidar – India
 * William Leon Dawson – US
 * William Ryan Dawson – US
 * Charles Walter De Vis – England/Australia
 * C. Douglas Deane – UK
 * Ruthven Deane – US
 * Côme-Damien Degland – France
 * Dudley DeGroot – US
 * Herbert Girton Deignan – US
 * Jean Théodore Delacour – France/US
 * Jacques Delamain – France
 * Adolphe Delattre – France
 * Georgi Petrovich Dementiev – USSR
 * Louis Denise – France
 * Antoon Emeric Marcel De Roo – Belgium
 * Jean-Marie Derscheid – Belgium
 * René Louiche Desfontaines – France
 * Marc Athanase Parfait Œillet des Murs – France
 * Barbara DeWolfe – US
 * Douglas Dewar – England
 * Raol Shri Dharmakumarsinhji – India
 * Elio Augusto Di Carlo – Italy
 * Jared Diamond – US
 * Elizabeth Dickens – US
 * Donald Ryder Dickey – US
 * Charles-Eusèbe Dionne – Canada
 * John Disney – UK, Australia
 * Viktor Rafaelyevich Dolnik – USSR/Russia
 * Janusz Domaniewski – Poland
 * Caroline Dormon – US
 * Jean Dorst – France
 * Henry Eeles Dresser – England
 * Rudolf Drost – Germany
 * Alphonse Joseph Charles Dubois – Belgium
 * Bernard du Bus de Gisignies – Belgium
 * Charles Dumont de Sainte-Croix – France
 * Andrzej Dunajewski – Poland
 * William Dutcher – US
 * Jonathan Dwight – US
 * Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki – Poland

E

 * George Edwards – England, "Father of British ornithology"
 * Elon Howard Eaton – US
 * Scott V. Edwards – US
 * Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg – Germany
 * Eugene Eisenmann – US
 * Walter Elmer Ekblaw – US
 * Carl R. Eklund – US
 * Daniel Giraud Elliot – US
 * Carlo von Erlanger – Germany
 * Arthur Humble Evans – England
 * Eduard Friedrich Eversmann – Germany
 * Thomas Campbell Eyton – England

F

 * Frederik Faber – Denmark
 * Robert Falla – New Zealand
 * Donald S. Farner – US
 * Norman Joseph Favaloro – Australia
 * Walter Faxon – US
 * Alan Feduccia – US
 * Christoph Feldegg – Austria
 * Frank Finn – England
 * Otto Finsch – Germany
 * Gustav Fischer – Germany
 * Albert Kenrick Fisher – US
 * James Maxwell McConnell Fisher – England
 * Kenneth Fisher – England
 * R. S. R. Fitter – England
 * John W. Fitzpatrick – US
 * Jim Flegg – England
 * James Henry Fleming – Canada
 * Edward Howe Forbush – US
 * Joseph Forshaw – Australia
 * Johann Reinhold Forster – Poland-Lithuania/England
 * James Franklin – England/India
 * Louis Fraser – England
 * Percy Evans Freke – Ireland
 * Herbert Friedmann – US
 * Johan Dalgas Frisch – Brazil
 * János Frivaldszky – Hungary
 * Louis Agassiz Fuertes – US
 * Max Fürbringer – Germany

G

 * Gaszton Gaál – Hungary
 * Hans Friedrich Gadow – Germany
 * Joseph Paul Gaimard – France
 * Tim Gallagher – US
 * William Gambel – US
 * Wulf Gatter – Germany
 * Heinrich Gaetke – Germany
 * Prosper Garnot – France
 * Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire – France
 * Zéphirin Gerbe – France
 * Enrico Hillyer Giglioli – Italy
 * Frank Gill – US
 * Theodore Gill – US
 * Ernest Thomas Gilliard – US
 * Robert Gillmor – England
 * Bernard du Bus de Gisignies – Netherlands/Belgium
 * Nikolai Alekseievich Gladkov – USSR
 * Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger – Germany
 * Johann Friedrich Gmelin – Germany
 * Frederick DuCane Godman – England
 * Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen – England
 * Mauricio González-Gordon y Díez – Spain
 * Derek Goodwin – England
 * Philip Henry Gosse – England
 * John Gould – England
 * Rolf Grantsau – Germany/Brazil
 * George Robert Gray – England
 * John Edward Gray (brother of George Robert) – England
 * Andrew Jackson Grayson – US
 * James Greenway – US
 * Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon – England
 * Joseph Grinnell – US
 * Ludlow Griscom – US
 * Hermann Grote – Germany
 * Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard – France
 * Johan Ernst Gunnerus – Norway
 * Jan Willem Boudewijn Gunning – Netherlands/South Africa
 * John Henry Gurney Jr. – UK
 * John Henry Gurney Sr. – UK
 * Eberhard Gwinner – Germany
 * Nils Carl Gustaf Fersen Gyldenstolpe – Sweden

H

 * Masauji Hachisuka (蜂須賀正氏) – Japan
 * Jack Hailman - United States
 * Mihkel Härms – Estonia
 * Yngvar Hagen – Norway
 * Pat Hall – England
 * Bernhard Hantzsch – Germany
 * Edward Hargitt – Scotland
 * Herbert Hastings Harington – British India
 * Edward Harris – US
 * Colin Harrison – England
 * Tom Harrisson – Argentina/England
 * Ernst Hartert – Germany
 * Gustav Hartlaub – Germany
 * François Haverschmidt – Netherlands
 * Arthur Hay, 9th Marquess of Tweeddale (published as Viscount Walden) – Scotland
 * Helen Hays – US
 * Cornelis Hazevoet – Netherlands
 * Gerhard Heilmann – Denmark
 * Ferdinand Heine – Germany
 * Bernd Heinrich – US
 * Katharina Heinroth – Germany
 * Oskar Heinroth – Germany
 * Carl Eduard Hellmayr – Austria
 * Wilhelm Hemprich – Germany
 * George Morrison Reid Henry – British Ceylon/England
 * Henry Wetherbee Henshaw – US
 * James Hepburn – England/Canada
 * Ottó Herman – Hungary
 * Johann Hermann – France
 * Theodor von Heuglin – Germany
 * Joseph Hickey – US
 * Warren Billingsley Hitchcock – Australia
 * John Hobbs – UK/Australia
 * Brian Houghton Hodgson – England/India
 * Ralph Hoffmann – US
 * Carl Peter Holbøll – Denmark
 * Ajoy Home – India
 * Richard T. Holmes – US
 * Jacques Bernard Hombron – France
 * Alexander von Homeyer – Germany
 * Eugen Ferdinand von Homeyer – Germany
 * Andries Hoogerwerf – Netherlands
 * Milton N. Hopkins – US
 * Thomas Horsfield – US
 * Henry Eliot Howard – England
 * William Henry Hudson – Argentina/England
 * Allan Octavian Hume – England/India
 * Rob Hume – England
 * Syed Abdulla Hussain – India
 * Frederick Hutton – England/New Zealand

I

 * Hermann von Ihering – Germany/Brazil
 * Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger – Germany
 * Collingwood Ingram – England
 * Tom Iredale – UK/Australia
 * Hussein Adan Isack – Kenya
 * Yuri Andreyevich Isakov – Russia/USSR

J

 * Pierre Jabouille – France
 * Frederick John Jackson – England/Uganda
 * Honoré Jacquinot – France
 * Helen F. James – US
 * Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet – Scotland
 * Konstanty Jelski – Poland
 * Thomas C. Jerdon – England/India
 * Herbert K. Job – US
 * Hans Johansen – Russia/Denmark
 * Hermann Johansen – Russia
 * Richard F. Johnston – US
 * Lynds Jones – US
 * Christian Jouanin – France
 * Henri Jouard – France
 * George Junge – Netherlands

K

 * Peter Kaestner – US
 * Gisela Kaplan – Australia
 * Johann Jakob Kaup – Germany
 * Janet Kear – England
 * Charles Keeler – US
 * John Gerrard Keulemans – Netherlands
 * Charles Rollin Keyes – US
 * Alexander Keyserling – Germany
 * Lavkumar Khachar – India
 * Norman Boyd Kinnear – Scotland
 * Jared Kirtland – US
 * Heinrich von Kittlitz – Germany
 * Niels Kjærbølling – Denmark
 * Otto Kleinschmidt – Germany
 * C. Boden Kloss – England/Malaya
 * Karel Kněžourek - Czechoslovakia
 * Walter Koelz – US
 * Alexander Koenig – Germany
 * Maria Koepcke – Peru
 * Paul Robert Kollibay – Prussia
 * Elizabeth Kozlova – Russia
 * Niels Krabbe – Denmark
 * K. S. R. Krishna Raju – India
 * Heinrich Kuhl – Germany
 * Hans Kummerlöwe (or Kumerloeve after World War II) – Germany
 * Nagahisa Kuroda (黒田長久) – Japan
 * Nagamichi Kuroda (黒田長礼) – Japan
 * Sayako Kuroda (黒田清子) – Japan

L

 * David Lack – England
 * Elizabeth Lack – England
 * Frédéric de Lafresnaye – France
 * Christian Ludwig Landbeck – Germany
 * Bill Lane – Australia
 * Amelia Laskey – US
 * John Latham – England
 * Alfred Laubmann – Germany
 * Louis Lavauden – France
 * George Newbold Lawrence – US
 * Edgar Leopold Layard – England/Ceylon
 * Dudley Le Souef – Australia
 * Elsie P. Leach – England
 * William Elford Leach – England
 * John Legg – England
 * William Vincent Legge – Australia
 * Johann Philipp Achilles Leisler – Germany
 * Boonsong Lekagul – Thailand
 * Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de La Tour – France
 * René Lesson – France
 * François Levaillant – France
 * Graceanna Lewis – US
 * Félix Louis L'Herminier – France
 * Hinrich Lichtenstein – Germany
 * Karl Theodor Liebe – Germany
 * Carl Linnaeus – Swedish
 * Thomas Littleton Powys, 4th Baron Lilford – England
 * Bradley C. Livezey – US
 * Victor Loche – France
 * Hans Löhrl – Germany
 * Einar Lönnberg - Sweden
 * Konrad Lorenz – Austria
 * Harald von Loudon – Germany
 * Michel Louette – Belgium
 * Herman L. Løvenskiold – Norway
 * Percy Lowe – England
 * George Lowery – US
 * Oskar Engelhard von Löwis of Menar – Latvia/Germany/Russia
 * Hubert Lynes – Wales/England

M

 * James Macdonald – Scotland/Australia
 * William MacGillivray – Scotland
 * Cyril Mackworth-Praed – England
 * Gyula Madarász – Austria-Hungary
 * Wolfgang Makatsch – Germany
 * Alexey Sergeevich Malchevsky – Russia
 * Alfred Malherbe – France
 * Louis Mandelli – Italy, India
 * Saverio Manetti – Italy
 * Stephen Marchant – Australia
 * Judy Kellogg Markowsky - United States
 * Charles Henry Tilson Marshall – England/India
 * Kathy Martin – Canada
 * Ian J. Mason – Australia
 * George Masters – Australia
 * Gregory Mathews – Australia
 * Ernst Mayr – US
 * George A. McCall – US
 * Elliott McClure – US/Southeast Asia
 * John Porter McCown – US
 * Allan Reginald McEvey – Australia
 * Edward Avery McIlhenny – US
 * Thomas McIlwraith – Canada
 * Charles McKay – US
 * Chris Mead – England
 * Edgar Alexander Mearns – US
 * Gerlof Mees – Netherlands
 * M.F.M. Meiklejohn – England
 * Annie Meinertzhagen – Scotland
 * Richard Meinertzhagen – England
 * Wilhelm Meise – Germany
 * Auguste Ménégaux - France
 * Mikhail Aleksandrovich Menzbier – Russia
 * Christopher Merret – England
 * C. Hart Merriam – US
 * Olivier Messiaen – France
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Meves - Germany, Sweden
 * Adolf Bernhard Meyer – Germany
 * Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee – US
 * Alden H. Miller – US
 * Alexander William Milligan – Australia
 * Alphonse Milne-Edwards – France
 * Clive Minton – Australia
 * Lacy Irvine Moffett – US
 * Juan Ignacio Molina – Chile
 * Edgardo Moltoni – Italy
 * Burt Monroe – US
 * George Montagu – England
 * John J. Montgomery – US
 * Frederic Moore – England
 * Robert Thomas Moore – US
 * Reginald Ernest Moreau – England
 * Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen – Denmark
 * Guy Mountfort – England
 * Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller – Germany
 * Salomon Müller – Germany
 * Étienne Mulsant – France
 * Robert Cushman Murphy – US
 * Durno Murray – Australia

N

 * Johann Natterer – Austria
 * Johann Friedrich Naumann – Germany
 * René de Naurois – France
 * K. K. Neelakantan – India
 * Adolph Nehrkorn – Germany
 * Henry Nehrling – US
 * Edward William Nelson – US
 * Thomas Hudson Nelson – England
 * Oscar Neumann – Germany
 * Oliver Michael Griffiths Newman – Australia
 * Alfred Newton – England
 * Edward Newton – England
 * Ian Newton – England
 * Margaret Morse Nice – US
 * Michael John Nicoll – UK/Egypt
 * John Treadwell Nichols – US
 * Max Nicholson – England
 * Günther Niethammer – Germany
 * Alexander von Nordmann – Finland
 * Alfred John North – Australia
 * Cornelius Nozeman – Netherlands

O

 * Eugene W. Oates – England/Burma
 * Harry C. Oberholser – US
 * Bill Oddie – England
 * William Robert Ogilvie-Grant – Scotland
 * Claes Christian Olrog – Sweden/Argentina
 * Storrs L. Olson – US
 * Eduard Daniël van Oort – Netherlands
 * Alcide d'Orbigny – France
 * George Ord – US
 * Gordon Orians – US
 * Wilfred Hudson Osgood – US
 * Émile Oustalet – France

P

 * Peter Simon Pallas – Germany
 * Shane A. Parker – England/Australia
 * Theodore A. Parker III – US
 * Kenneth Carroll Parkes – US
 * Carl Parrot – Germany
 * Titian Peale – US
 * Thomas Gilbert Pearson – US
 * August von Pelzeln – Austria
 * Thomas Pennant – Wales
 * James Lee Peters – US
 * Wilhelm Peters – Germany
 * Roger Tory Peterson – US
 * Sewall Pettingill – US
 * William Henry Phelps – US/Venezuela
 * William H. Phelps Jr. – Venezuela
 * Rodolfo Amando Philippi – Germany/Chile
 * Allan Robert Phillips – US
 * John Charles Phillips – US
 * Olivério Pinto – Brazil
 * Frank Pitelka – US
 * Graham Pizzey – Australia
 * Sally Poncet – Australia
 * Pilai Poonswad – Thailand
 * John du Pont – US
 * Leonid Aleksandrovich Portenko – USSR(Ukraine)
 * Harold Douglas Pratt Jr. – US
 * Josef Prokop Pražák – Bohemia
 * Alexandre Prigogine – Belgium
 * Aleksandr Promptov – Russia/USSR
 * Nikolay Przhevalsky (or Przewalski) – Russia
 * Jacques Pucheran – France

Q

 * Jean René Constant Quoy – France
 * Vo Quy – Vietnam

R

 * Dioscoro S. Rabor – Philippines
 * Stamford Raffles – England/Singapore
 * Edward Pierson Ramsay – Australia
 * Austin L. Rand – Canada
 * Pamela C. Rasmussen – US
 * Sushma Reddy – India/US
 * Ludwig Reichenbach – Germany
 * Anton Reichenow – Germany
 * Pauline Reilly – Australia
 * Bernhard Rensch – Germany
 * John Richardson – Scotland/England
 * Charles Wallace Richmond – US
 * Robert S. Ridgely – US
 * John Livzey Ridgway – US
 * Robert Ridgway – US
 * Joseph Harvey Riley – US
 * Leonora Jeffrey Rintoul – Scotland
 * Sidney Dillon Ripley – US
 * Robert Ritter von Dombrowski – Bohemia/Romania
 * Chandler Robbins – US
 * Austin Roberts – South Africa
 * Thomas Sadler Roberts – US
 * Herbert C. Robinson – England/Malaya
 * Edward Hearle Rodd – England
 * Theodore Roosevelt – US
 * Hermann von Rosenberg – Germany
 * Adriaan Joseph van Rossem – US
 * Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild – England
 * Frank Rozendaal – Netherlands
 * Eduard Rüppell – Germany
 * Karl Russ – Germany(Prussia)
 * Erich Rutschke – Germany
 * Wladyslaw Rydzewski – Poland

S

 * Edward Sabine – Ireland
 * John Hall Sage – US
 * Finn Salomonsen – Denmark
 * Tommaso Salvadori – Italy
 * Osbert Salvin – England
 * Howard Saunders – England
 * William Edwin Saunders – Canada
 * William Savage – US
 * Paolo Savi – Italy
 * Hans Schaanning – Norway
 * Alfred Schifferli – Switzerland
 * Eiler Lehn Schiøler – Denmark
 * Hermann Schlegel – Germany/Netherlands
 * Richard Schodde – Australia
 * Ernst Schüz – Germany
 * Philip Sclater – England
 * William Lutley Sclater – England
 * Giovanni Antonio Scopoli – Austria/Tyrol
 * J. Michael Scott – US
 * Peter Scott – England
 * William Earl Dodge Scott - US
 * Jan Bogusław Szczepski – Poland
 * Henry Seebohm – England
 * Josef Seilern – Austria/Czech
 * Prideaux John Selby – England
 * George B. Sennett – US
 * Pavel Vladimirovich Serebrovsky – Russia/USSR
 * William Serle – Scotland
 * Nikolai Alekseevich Severtzov (or Severtsov) – Russia
 * Richard Bowdler Sharpe – England
 * George Shaw – England
 * Frederick H. Sheldon – US
 * George Ernest Shelley – England
 * Althea Sherman – US
 * Hadoram Shirihai – Israel
 * Lester L. Short – US
 * Charles Sibley – US
 * David Allen Sibley – US
 * Helmut Sick – Brazil
 * Hendrik Cornelis Siebers – Netherlands
 * Eugène Simon – French
 * Ken Simpson – Australia
 * Vasily Nikolaevich Skalon – Russia/USSR
 * Cuthbert John Skead – South Africa
 * Alexander Skutch – US
 * Tore Slagsvold – Norway
 * Andrew Smith – Scotland
 * Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby – England
 * Bertram E. Smythies – England
 * Emilie Snethlage – Germany/Brazil
 * David Snow – England
 * Barbara Snow – England
 * Jan Sokolowski – Poland
 * James Mortimer Southwick – US
 * Evgeni Pavlovich Spangenberg – USSR
 * Anders Erikson Sparrman – Sweden
 * Johann Baptist von Spix – Germany
 * Isaac Sprague – US
 * Don Stap – US
 * David Steadman – US
 * Joseph Beal Steere – US
 * Boris K. Stegmann – Russia/USSR
 * Joachim Steinbacher – Germany
 * Leonhard Stejneger – Norway – US
 * Georg Steller – Germany
 * Leo Stepanyan – USSR/Armenia
 * James Francis Stephens – England
 * Ferdinand Stoliczka – Czech Republic
 * Jean Stolzmann (also as Jan Sztolcman) - Poland
 * Witmer Stone – US
 * Robert W. Storer – US
 * Erwin Stresemann – Germany
 * Hugh Edwin Strickland – England
 * Robert Stroud – US
 * Noah Strycker – US
 * Jacob H. Studer – US
 * Johann Heinrich Christian Friedrich Sturm – Germany
 * Johann Wilhelm Sturm – Germany
 * J. Denis Summers-Smith – Scotland/England
 * Carl Jakob Sundevall – Sweden
 * Petr Sushkin – Russia
 * Ernst Sutter – Switzerland
 * George Miksch Sutton – US
 * William Swainson – England/New Zealand
 * Charles Swinhoe – England/India
 * Robert Swinhoe – England/Formosa
 * William Henry Sykes – England/India
 * Jan Sztolcman (also as Jean Stolzmann) – Poland

T

 * Władysław Taczanowski – Poland
 * Coenraad Jacob Temminck – Netherlands
 * John Kenneth Terres – US
 * John Eliot Thayer – US
 * Gerhard Thielcke – Germany
 * Johannes Thienemann – Germany
 * Ludwig Thienemann – Germany
 * William Lay Thompson – US
 * Arthur Landsborough Thomson – Scotland
 * Claud B. Ticehurst – England
 * Samuel Tickell – India
 * Luuk Tinbergen – Netherlands
 * Niko Tinbergen – Netherlands
 * Friedrich Tischler – Prussia/Germany
 * Walter Edmond Clyde Todd – US
 * John David Digues La Touche – England/Ireland
 * Charles Haskins Townsend – US
 * John Kirk Townsend – US
 * Melvin Alvah Traylor Jr. – US
 * Alberto O. Treganza – US
 * Roland Trimen – England/South Africa
 * Henry Baker Tristram – England
 * Johann Jakob von Tschudi – Switzerland
 * Viktor von Tschusi zu Schmidhoffen – Austria
 * Bernard Tucker – England
 * Marmaduke Tunstall – England
 * William Turner – England
 * Konstanty Tyzenhauz – Poland

U

 * Miklós Udvardy – Hungary/Canada
 * Tatsuo Utagawa (宇田川竜男) – Japan

V

 * Dirk Van den Abeele – Belgium
 * Jacques Van Impe – Belgium
 * Victor Van Someren – Australia/Kenya
 * Josselyn Van Tyne – US
 * Charles Vaurie – France/US
 * Édouard Verreaux – France
 * Jules Verreaux – France
 * Louis Pierre Vieillot – France
 * Nicholas Aylward Vigors – Ireland/England
 * Keith Vinicombe – England
 * William Vogt – US
 * Karel Voous – Netherlands

W

 * Johann Georg Wagler – Germany
 * Will Wagstaff – Wales/England
 * Veleslav Wahl – Czechoslovakia
 * Johan August Wahlberg – Sweden
 * Lawrence H. Walkinshaw – US
 * Alfred Russel Wallace – England
 * Robert George Wardlaw-Ramsay – England
 * George Waterston – Scotland
 * Richard Weatherly – Australia
 * Hugo Weigold – Germany
 * Alexander Wetmore – US
 * Hugh Whistler – India
 * Joseph Whitaker – Italy/England
 * Gilbert White – England
 * Henry Luke White – Australia
 * Otto Widmann – US
 * Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied – Germany
 * John Wiens – US
 * George Willett – US
 * Lionel William Wiglesworth – England
 * Iolo Williams – Wales
 * Francis Willughby – UK
 * Alexander Wilson – Scotland/US
 * Kerry-Jayne Wilson – NZ
 * Scott Barchard Wilson – England
 * Marie Winn – US
 * Harry Witherby – England
 * Kazimierz Wodzicki – Poland/New Zealand
 * Hans Edmund Wolters – Germany
 * Won Hong-gu, 원홍구 – North Korea (father of Won Pyong-oh)
 * Won Pyong-oh, 원병오 – South Korea
 * Samuel Washington Woodhouse – US
 * John Woinarski – Australia
 * Dean Conant Worcester – US
 * Philogène Wytsman – Belgium

X

 * John Xantus – Hungary

Y

 * Yoshimaro Yamashina (山階芳麿) – Japan
 * William Yarrell – England
 * John Yealland – England

Z

 * Nikolai Alekseyvich Zarudny – Ukraine/Russia
 * John Todd Zimmer – US
 * Giuseppe Zinanni – Italy

title: List of ornithologists


text:
British Trust for Ornithology

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is an organisation founded in 1932 for the study of birds in the British Isles. The Prince of Wales has been patron since October 2020.

Beginning
In 1931 Max Nicholson wrote: "In the United States, Hungary, Holland and elsewhere a clearing-house for research is provided by the state: in this country such a solution would be uncongenial, and we must look for some alternative centre of national scope not imposed from above but built up from below. An experiment on these lines has been undertaken at Oxford since the founding of the Oxford Bird Census in 1927 [...]. The scheme now has a full-time director, Mr W.B.Alexander. [...] It is intended to put this undertaking on a permanent footing and to build it up as a clearing-house for bird-watching results in this country."

This led to a meeting at the British Museum (Natural History) in February 1932, which in turn led to the foundation of an organisation to develop the Oxford scheme. The name British Trust for Ornithology was used from May 1933 and an appeal for funds was published in The Times on 1 July. Max Nicholson was the first treasurer, Bernard Tucker the secretary. Harry Witherby was an early benefactor and vice-chair.

Much has been discovered about birds by watching and counting them, but such methods rarely allow birds to be identified as individuals. This is essential if we are to learn about how long they live and when and where they move, questions that are vital for bird conservation. Bird ringing (placing a lightweight, uniquely numbered, metal ring around a bird's leg) provides a reliable and harmless method of identifying birds as individuals.

Each ring also has an address so that anyone finding a ringed bird can help by reporting where and when it was found and what happened to it. Some ringing projects also use colour rings to allow individual birds to be identified without being caught.

Birds have been ringed in Britain and Ireland for nearly a hundred years and it still reveals new facts about migration routes and wintering areas. The primary focus of the BTO's ringing schemes is now the monitoring of bird populations, to provide information on how many young birds leave the nest and survive to become adults, as well as how many adults survive the stresses of breeding, migration and severe weather. Changes in survival rates and other aspects of birds' biology can indicate the causes of population changes.

The BTO runs two specialized projects to collect this information. The Constant Effort Sites (CES) scheme provides information on population size, breeding success and survival of bird species living in scrub and wetland habitats. Ringers work at over 130 CES scheme sites each year. The Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) project gathers survival data for a wide range of species, particularly those of current conservation concern.

Ringing revealed that declines in the number of Sedge Warblers breeding in Britain and Ireland was linked to lower levels of rainfall in their African wintering quarters; whilst the recent dramatic decline in the numbers of Song Thrushes was found to relate to a reduction in the survival rate of young birds. This information should aid identification of the environmental factors responsible for the decline.

The BTO is a member of the European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING), and hosts the EURING Databank.

Edward Grey Institute
In 1938 the BTO contributed funds to the new Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology.

In 1947, the institute became part of a new department of Zoological Field Studies at the University of Oxford, and the BTO again concentrated on a programme of volunteer-based surveys.

Beech Grove
In December 1962, at the behest of Tony Norris, the BTO purchased Beech Grove, a large Victorian house in Tring, Hertfordshire, relocating there from Oxford, along with their Ringing Office, which had been at the British Museum.

The Nunnery
In April 1991, the BTO moved to The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk, a large property lying between the A134 and the River Little Ouse, which had been donated to them. Parts of the medieval Benedictine Nunnery of St George can still be seen on this site.

The BTO also runs its only bird reserve, Nunnery Lakes Reserve, on this site. The reserve lies between the River Thet and the River Little Ouse, extending upstream from The Nunnery, along the banks of the Little Ouse, and incorporates several flooded gravel pits.

In the early 2000s, a new library was created there, dedicated to the memory of Chris Mead. Professor Jeremy Greenwood PhD, who had been Director since 1988, retired in September 2007. The current Chief Executive Officer is Dr Juliet Vickery, as of 2020.

Activities
The BTO carries out research into the lives of birds, chiefly by conducting population and breeding surveys and by bird ringing, largely carried out by a large number of volunteers. Its Garden Birdwatch survey, for example, allows large numbers of birdwatchers to participate, by making a weekly count of the birds they see in their gardens.

Journals
The BTO publishes a number of journals:
 * Bird Study - a scientific journal, published since 1954.
 * BTO News -  the newsletter for all members.
 * Bird Table -  for participants in the Garden BirdWatch Project.
 * Ringing & Migration - Journal of the BTO Ringing Scheme.
 * WeBS News - newsletter for participants in the Wetland Bird Survey.

Atlases
In September 1967, inspired by on-going work on the innovative Atlas of Breeding Birds of the West Midlands, produced by the West Midland Bird Club, and in partnership with the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (now BirdWatch Ireland), work began on the first Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland. 3,862 10 km squares were surveyed and the atlas was published in 1976.

The New Atlas (1993) updated and refined this huge survey, again with the help of IWC and the Scottish Ornithologists Club. A Winter Atlas and a Historical Atlas have also been published. The groundbreaking Migration Atlas presents the results of almost 100 years of bird ringing. As with all BTO studies, the vast majority of the fieldwork was undertaken by volunteers.

The Bird Atlas 2007–11, published November 2013, combines breeding and winter surveys across the entire UK and Ireland, involving the BTO, Birdwatch Ireland, and the Scottish Ornithologist's Club, in order to produce a new atlas. Fieldwork began in winter 2007, and was due to continue until the end of 2011.

Awards
The Trust awards the Bernard Tucker Medal for services to ornithology, named in memory of Bernard Tucker, the first Secretary, and the Dilys Breese Medal in honour of Dilys Breese and several Marsh Awards for Ornithology.

BirdTrack
BirdTrack is an online citizen science website, operated by the BTO on behalf of a partnership of the BTO, the RSPB, BirdWatch Ireland, the Scottish Ornithologists' Club and the Welsh Ornithological Society (Cymdeithas Adaryddol Cymru).

Lectures
The Witherby Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture organised by the BTO since 1968.

Royal patronage
HRH Duke of Edinburgh: 1980s? – 19 October 2020

HRH The Prince of Wales: 19 October 2020 – Present
 * As HRH The Duke of Cambridge: 19 October 2020 – 8 September 2022
 * As HRH The Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge: 8 September 2022 – 9 September 2022

Video clips

 * BTO YouTube channel

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: British Trust for Ornithology


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Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology

The Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology (EGI), at Oxford University in England, is an academic body that conducts research in ornithology and the general field of evolutionary ecology and conservation biology, with an emphasis on understanding organisms in natural environments. It is named in honour of Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, a notable politician and ornithologist, and is part of the Department of Zoology at Oxford University.

The Institute houses the Alexander Library, the best ornithological library in Europe and one of the best in the world, which is named after W. B. Alexander.

History
The Edward Grey Institute (EGI) was founded in 1938, having grown out of the Oxford Bird Census, itself founded in 1927. It was the brainchild of Max Nicholson, Bernard Tucker, and Wilfred ('W. B.') Alexander, and was initially founded to promote the economic study of ornithology. It took its name from Viscount Grey, at one time Chancellor of the University and UK Foreign Secretary, and a lifelong birdwatcher, perhaps best known as the man who remarked, on the eve of the First World War: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

The first Director of the fledgling Institute was W. B. Alexander, remembered in the name of the EGI's library, the Alexander Library. Alexander was succeeded in 1945 by former school-teacher David Lack, one of the pioneers of population biology, who had already published The Life of the Robin. Lack served as Director until his death in 1973, working with field assistants such as Denis Owen, and oversaw the growth of the EGI into an internationally known centre for research into population biology of birds.

Lack was succeeded by Chris Perrins in 1974, who continued as Director until his official retirement in 2002. During this time, work in the EGI expanded from the field of population biology to encompass the new field of behavioural ecology, with John Krebs and Nick Davies (then at Oxford, later Professor of Behavioural Ecology at Cambridge) co-authoring the textbooks that defined the field. The EGI was also the centre for work on The Birds of the Western Palearctic, up to its completion in 1990s, and became increasingly important as a training centre for ornithologists who went on to play important roles in conservation.

Following Perrins' retirement, a major endowment in honour of Dr Luc Hoffmann's eightieth birthday led to the establishment of the Luc Hoffmann Chair in Field Ornithology. Ben Sheldon was elected as the first holder of this chair, and as Director of the EGI in 2004.

By the end of 2006, a total of 165 DPhil students had successfully defended their theses based on work carried out at the EGI; this number is at least matched by the number of postdoctoral and other research visitors who have spent time at the Institute. Scientific research work on birds has been conducted on all continents and the major research themes of the EGI, population and evolutionary ecology of birds have been supplemented by a very wide range of research activities.

Notable staff

 * John Parslow


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Rational function

In mathematics, a rational function is any function that can be defined by a rational fraction, which is an algebraic fraction such that both the numerator and the denominator are polynomials. The coefficients of the polynomials need not be rational numbers; they may be taken in any field $K$. In this case, one speaks of a rational function and a rational fraction over $K$. The values of the variables may be taken in any field $L$ containing $K$. Then the domain of the function is the set of the values of the variables for which the denominator is not zero, and the codomain is $L$.

The set of rational functions over a field $K$ is a field, the field of fractions of the ring of the polynomial functions over $K$.

Definitions
A function $$f$$ is called a rational function if it can be written in the form

 * $$ f(x) = \frac{P(x)}{Q(x)} $$

where $$P$$ and $$Q$$ are polynomial functions of $$x$$ and $$Q$$ is not the zero function. The domain of $$f$$ is the set of all values of $$x$$ for which the denominator $$Q(x)$$ is not zero.

However, if $$\textstyle P$$ and $$\textstyle Q$$ have a non-constant polynomial greatest common divisor $$\textstyle R$$, then setting $$\textstyle P=P_1R$$ and $$\textstyle Q=Q_1R$$ produces a rational function

 * $$ f_1(x) = \frac{P_1(x)}{Q_1(x)}, $$

which may have a larger domain than $$f$$, and is equal to $$f$$ on the domain of $$f.$$ It is a common usage to identify $$ f$$ and $$ f_1$$, that is to extend "by continuity" the domain of $$f$$ to that of $$f_1.$$ Indeed, one can define a rational fraction as an equivalence class of fractions of polynomials, where two fractions $$\textstyle \frac{A(x)}{B(x)}$$ and $$\textstyle \frac{C(x)}{D(x)}$$ are considered equivalent if $$A(x)D(x)=B(x)C(x)$$. In this case $$\textstyle \frac{P(x)}{Q(x)}$$ is equivalent to $$\textstyle \frac{P_1(x)}{Q_1(x)}.$$

A proper rational function is a rational function in which the degree of $$P(x)$$ is less than the degree of $$Q(x)$$ and both are real polynomials, named by analogy to a proper fraction in $$\mathbb{Q}.$$

Degree
There are several non equivalent definitions of the degree of a rational function.

Most commonly, the degree of a rational function is the maximum of the degrees of its constituent polynomials $P$ and $Q$, when the fraction is reduced to lowest terms. If the degree of $f$ is $d$, then the equation

 * $$f(z) = w \,$$

has $d$ distinct solutions in $z$ except for certain values of $w$, called critical values, where two or more solutions coincide or where some solution is rejected at infinity (that is, when the degree of the equation decreases after having cleared the denominator).

In the case of complex coefficients, a rational function with degree one is a Möbius transformation.

The degree of the graph of a rational function is not the degree as defined above: it is the maximum of the degree of the numerator and one plus the degree of the denominator.

In some contexts, such as in asymptotic analysis, the degree of a rational function is the difference between the degrees of the numerator and the denominator.

In network synthesis and network analysis, a rational function of degree two (that is, the ratio of two polynomials of degree at most two) is often called a biquadratic function.

Examples
The rational function

 * $$f(x) = \frac{x^3-2x}{2(x^2-5)}$$

is not defined at

 * $$x^2=5 \Leftrightarrow x=\pm \sqrt{5}.$$

It is asymptotic to $$\tfrac{x}{2}$$ as $$x\to \infty.$$

The rational function

 * $$f(x) = \frac{x^2 + 2}{x^2 + 1}$$

is defined for all real numbers, but not for all complex numbers, since if x were a square root of $$-1$$ (i.e. the imaginary unit or its negative), then formal evaluation would lead to division by zero:

 * $$f(i) = \frac{i^2 + 2}{i^2 + 1} = \frac{-1 + 2}{-1 + 1} = \frac{1}{0},$$

which is undefined.

A constant function such as $f(x) = π$ is a rational function since constants are polynomials. The function itself is rational, even though the value of $f(x)$ is irrational for all $x$.

Every polynomial function $$f(x) = P(x)$$ is a rational function with $$Q(x) = 1.$$ A function that cannot be written in this form, such as $$f(x) = \sin(x),$$ is not a rational function. However, the adjective "irrational" is not generally used for functions.

Every Laurent polynomial can be written as a rational function while the converse is not necessarily true, i.e., the ring of Laurent polynomials is a subring of the rational functions.

The rational function $$f(x) = \tfrac{x}{x}$$ is equal to 1 for all x except 0, where there is a removable singularity. The sum, product, or quotient (excepting division by the zero polynomial) of two rational functions is itself a rational function. However, the process of reduction to standard form may inadvertently result in the removal of such singularities unless care is taken. Using the definition of rational functions as equivalence classes gets around this, since x/x is equivalent to 1/1.

Taylor series
The coefficients of a Taylor series of any rational function satisfy a linear recurrence relation, which can be found by equating the rational function to a Taylor series with indeterminate coefficients, and collecting like terms after clearing the denominator.

For example,

 * $$\frac{1}{x^2 - x + 2} = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k x^k.$$

Multiplying through by the denominator and distributing,

 * $$1 = (x^2 - x + 2) \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k x^k$$

 * $$1 = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k x^{k+2} - \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k x^{k+1} + 2\sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k x^k.$$

After adjusting the indices of the sums to get the same powers of x, we get

 * $$1 = \sum_{k=2}^{\infty} a_{k-2} x^k - \sum_{k=1}^{\infty} a_{k-1} x^k + 2\sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k x^k.$$

Combining like terms gives

 * $$1 = 2a_0 + (2a_1 - a_0)x + \sum_{k=2}^{\infty} (a_{k-2} - a_{k-1} + 2a_k) x^k.$$

Since this holds true for all x in the radius of convergence of the original Taylor series, we can compute as follows. Since the constant term on the left must equal the constant term on the right it follows that

 * $$a_0 = \frac{1}{2}.$$

Then, since there are no powers of x on the left, all of the coefficients on the right must be zero, from which it follows that

 * $$a_1 = \frac{1}{4}$$

 * $$a_k = \frac{1}{2} (a_{k-1} - a_{k-2})\quad \text{for}\ k \ge 2.$$

Conversely, any sequence that satisfies a linear recurrence determines a rational function when used as the coefficients of a Taylor series. This is useful in solving such recurrences, since by using partial fraction decomposition we can write any proper rational function as a sum of factors of the form 1 / (ax + b) and expand these as geometric series, giving an explicit formula for the Taylor coefficients; this is the method of generating functions.

Abstract algebra and geometric notion
In abstract algebra the concept of a polynomial is extended to include formal expressions in which the coefficients of the polynomial can be taken from any field. In this setting, given a field F and some indeterminate X, a rational expression (also known as a rational fraction or, in algebraic geometry, a rational function) is any element of the field of fractions of the polynomial ring F[X]. Any rational expression can be written as the quotient of two polynomials P/Q with Q ≠ 0, although this representation isn't unique. P/Q is equivalent to R/S, for polynomials P, Q, R, and S, when PS = QR. However, since F[X] is a unique factorization domain, there is a unique representation for any rational expression P/Q with P and Q polynomials of lowest degree and Q chosen to be monic. This is similar to how a fraction of integers can always be written uniquely in lowest terms by canceling out common factors.

The field of rational expressions is denoted F(X). This field is said to be generated (as a field) over F by (a transcendental element) X, because F(X) does not contain any proper subfield containing both F and the element X.

Complex rational functions
In complex analysis, a rational function

 * $$f(z) = \frac{P(z)}{Q(z)}$$

is the ratio of two polynomials with complex coefficients, where $Q$ is not the zero polynomial and $P$ and $Q$ have no common factor (this avoids $f$ taking the indeterminate value 0/0).

The domain of $f$ is the set of complex numbers such that $$Q(z)\ne 0$$. Every rational function can be naturally extended to a function whose domain and range are the whole Riemann sphere (complex projective line).

Rational functions are representative examples of meromorphic functions.

Iteration of rational functions (maps) on the Riemann sphere creates discrete dynamical systems.

Notion of a rational function on an algebraic variety
Like polynomials, rational expressions can also be generalized to n indeterminates X1,..., Xn, by taking the field of fractions of F[X1,..., Xn], which is denoted by F(X1,..., Xn).

An extended version of the abstract idea of rational function is used in algebraic geometry. There the function field of an algebraic variety V is formed as the field of fractions of the coordinate ring of V (more accurately said, of a Zariski-dense affine open set in V). Its elements f are considered as regular functions in the sense of algebraic geometry on non-empty open sets U, and also may be seen as morphisms to the projective line.

Applications
Rational functions are used in numerical analysis for interpolation and approximation of functions, for example the Padé approximations introduced by Henri Padé. Approximations in terms of rational functions are well suited for computer algebra systems and other numerical software. Like polynomials, they can be evaluated straightforwardly, and at the same time they express more diverse behavior than polynomials.

Rational functions are used to approximate or model more complex equations in science and engineering including fields and forces in physics, spectroscopy in analytical chemistry, enzyme kinetics in biochemistry, electronic circuitry, aerodynamics, medicine concentrations in vivo, wave functions for atoms and molecules, optics and photography to improve image resolution, and acoustics and sound.

In signal processing, the Laplace transform (for continuous systems) or the z-transform (for discrete-time systems) of the impulse response of commonly-used linear time-invariant systems (filters) with infinite impulse response are rational functions over complex numbers.

title: Rational function


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Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape is a 1958 one-act play, in English, by Samuel Beckett. With a cast of one man, it was written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue". It was inspired by Beckett's experience of listening to Magee reading extracts from Molloy and From an Abandoned Work on the BBC Third Programme in December 1957.

It is considered to be among Beckett’s major dramas.

First publication
In a letter to a London bookseller Jake Schwartz on 15 March 1958, Beckett wrote that he had "'four states, in typescript, with copious notes and dirty corrections, of a short stage monologue I have just written (in English) for Pat Magee. This was composed on the machine from a tangle of old notes, so I have not the MS to offer you."

According to Ackerley and Gontarski, "It was first published in Evergreen Review 2.5 (summer 1958), then in Krapp's Last Tape and Embers (Faber, 1959), and Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces (Grove, 1960)." Beckett’s own translation of the play into French, La Dernière Bande, was published in Les Lettres Nouvelles on 4 March 1959.

The available printed texts must not be taken as definitive. "By the mid-1950s Beckett was already talking and working like a director. In a letter to Rosset's editorial assistant, Judith Schmidt, on 11 May 1959, Beckett referred to the staging of Krapp's Last Tape as its 'creation'," and he made numerous significant changes to the text over the years as he was involved in directing the play.

Others
The first German performance, on 28 September 1959, was directed by Walter Henn at Berlin's Schillertheater, where 10 years later, on 5 October 1969, Samuel Beckett himself staged his text in a most successful performance (with Martin Held as Krapp).

The first American performance, on 14 January 1960, was directed by Alan Schneider and starred Donald Davis.

Synopsis
The curtain rises on a "late evening in the future." Krapp, an old man, is sitting in his den in the dark, lit by a light above his desk. On his desk are a tape recorder and a number of tins containing reels of recorded tape. He reads aloud from a ledger to find a certain tape, but the words alone are not jogging his memory. He takes childish pleasure in saying the word ‘spool’.

The tape dates from the day he turned 39. His recorded voice says that he has just celebrated the occasion alone "at the wine house," jotting down notes in preparation for the later recording session. "The new light above my table is a great improvement," states the recorded Krapp, before describing how much he enjoys leaving it to wander off into the darkness so that he may return to the zone of light, identifying it with his essential self.

The voice reports that he has just reviewed an old tape from when he was in his late twenties. It amuses him to comment on his impressions of what he was like in his twenties, and the 69-year-old Krapp joins in the derisory laughter. The young man he was back then is described as idealistic and unrealistic in his expectations.

The voice reviews his last year, talking about sitting on a bench outside the nursing home and waiting for the news that his mother had died. Krapp in the current day is more interested in his younger self's use of the rather archaic word "viduity" than the reaction of the voice on the tape to their mother's passing. He stops listening to look up the word in a large dictionary. He returns to the tape; at the moment he learns of his mother's death, his younger self is in the process of throwing a rubber ball to a dog. He ends up simply leaving the ball with the dog.

The voice starts to describe the revelation he experienced at the end of a pier. Krapp grows impatient when his younger self starts enthusing about this. He fast-forwards to near the end of the tape to escape the onslaught of words, where suddenly the mood has changed and he finds himself in the middle of a description of a romantic liaison between himself and a woman in a punt. Krapp lets it play out and then rewinds the tape to hear the complete episode.

Afterwards, Krapp loads a fresh tape and begins to recount his year. He is scathing when it comes to his assessment of his thirty-nine-year-old self. He finds he has nothing he wants to record for posterity, save the fact he "revelled in the word spool." He mentions a trip to the park and attending Vespers, where he dozed off and fell off the pew. He also mentions his recent literary disappointments: "seventeen copies sold", presumably of his last book, eleven of which have gone not to interested readers but to foreign libraries. His sex life has been reduced to periodic visits by an old prostitute. Unlike his younger selves, Krapp has nothing good to say about the man he has become and even the idea of making a "last effort" when it comes to his writing upsets him.

He retreats into memories from his dim and distant past, gathering holly and walking the dog of a Sunday morning. He then remembers the girl on the punt and wrenches off the tape he has been recording, swapping back to the prior tape and replaying the entire section again. This time he allows the tape to play to the very end, with the thirty-nine-year-old Krapp determinedly not regretting the choices he has made, certain that what he would produce in the years to come would more than compensate him for any potential loss of happiness.

Krapp makes no response to this but allows the tape to play on, silent, until the final curtain.

Structure
In Waiting for Godot, Beckett uses aspects of Judeo-Christianity as the template for his play, in Film the template is the writings of Bishop Berkeley, and in Krapp's Last Tape, according to Anthony Cronin, he uses Manichaeism as a structural device: "The dichotomy of light and dark ... is central to Manichaean doctrine ... Its adherents believed that the world was ruled by evil powers, against which the god of the whole of creation struggled as yet in vain ... Krapp is in violation of the three seals or prohibitions of Manichaeism for the elect: the seal of the hands, forbidding engagement in a profession, the seal of the breast against sexual desire, and the seal of the mouth, which forbids the drinking of wine ... Beckett [however] seems to have known no more about Manichaeism than is contained in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which he possessed."

Analysis
"Krapp’s spool of life is almost wound, and the silent tape is both the time it has left to run and the silence into which he must pass." Whereas the younger Krapp talks about the "fire in me" the tired old man who sits listening is simply "burning to be gone." The title of the play seems obvious, that what we have witnessed is the recording of Krapp’s final tape, "yet there is an ambiguity: 'last' can mean 'most recent' as well as 'ultimate'. The speaker in Browning's My Last Duchess is already planning to marry his next duchess ... Still, one hopes for Krapp's sake that he will be gone before another year is over."

The ending in which Krapp re-listens to his younger self discuss his romantic encounter is a scene of masochism reminiscent of Croak in Words and Music, tormenting himself with an image of a woman’s face.

Black-and-white imagery features heavily throughout the play.

Characters
Although there is only one person onstage, there are a number of 'characters' mentioned throughout. The play is considered to be Beckett at his most autobiographical, and it does draw heavily on biographical detail. He once told the scholar Lawrence Harvey, though, that his "work does not depend on experience – [it is] not a record of experience. Of course you use it." Beckett takes elements from his own life, his failed love life, his drinking, his – at the time – literary failures and looks where things might have gone. "When, in 1956, Vivian Mercier saw him in Paris, he told him that he felt 'all dried up, with nothing left but self-translation.'"

Krapp was originally designated simply ‘A’ in the first draft. The first appearance of a title was "a manuscript edition to Typescript 2: Crapp’s Last Tape"; the more familiar Germanic spelling came later. The name Krapp with its excremental connotations had been used before by Beckett however. In his first play, Eleutheria (unstaged and unpublished during his life), dating back to 1947, the protagonist is Victor Krap, a young man who has decided to retreat from life and do nothing. He has been described as a world-weary anti-hero, a failed writer and seedy solipsist, a clear prototype for the later Krapp.
 * Krapp

When the thirty-nine-year-old Krapp is talking about his neighbour's ritual singing in the evening he tries to remember if he sang as a boy and is unable to do so. He does recall attending Vespers but it would be unusual for him to attend Evensong without participating in the singing of the hymn. The sixty-nine-year-old Krapp sings a few lines from the "Now the Day is Over" in early performances of the play but Beckett excised this as being "too clumsily explicit".
 * Krapp (as a boy)

The 39-year-old Krapp looks back on the 20-odd-year-old Krapp with the same level of contempt as the 20-odd-year-old Krapp appears to have displayed for the young man he saw himself for in his late teens. Each can see clearly the fool he was but only time will reveal what kind of fool he has become.

Although no time frame is given, it is likely that sixty-nine-year-old Krapp's memories of being "again in the dingle at Christmas Eve, gathering holly ... [or] on Croghan on a Sunday morning, in the haze, with the bitch" alludes to Beckett's own childhood familial memories.

His birth-sign in early drafts is given as Aries, Beckett's own. All we learn about Krapp at this age comes from the tape. Like a lot of young men he is full of "aspirations" – his work is starting to take shape – and "resolutions" – he is already aware that his drinking needs to be curbed. He is becoming resigned to the fact that he might well have let true love – represented by the image of a "girl in a shabby green coat, on a railway-station platform" – get away from him. He has settled for an on/off relationship with a "Bianca" but even there his future plans do not feature her. We learn that his problem with constipation has been ongoing since at least this time. He disparages his youth and is glad it is over. The thirty-nine-year-old Krapp estimates that the tape he had been listening to was made some ten or twelve years earlier. If it was twelve then he would have been twenty-seven at the time it was recorded.
 * Krapp (in his twenties)

"In the earlier drafts the woman with whom the young Krapp lived [later named "Bianca"] was first named 'Alba' (a character in Dream of Fair to Middling Women modelled on Ethna MacCarthy whom he had loved when he was a young man), then 'Celia' (the name of the green-eyed prostitute with whom Murphy cohabits in Murphy), then 'Furry' (nickname of Anne Rudmose-Brown, the wife of Beckett's French Professor at Trinity, who was himself satirised as 'the Polar Bear' in Dream of Fair to Middling Women).".
 * Bianca

He settled on 'Bianca', who was most likely based on another lecturer, Bianca Esposito, who (along with Walter Starkie) taught him Italian and cultivated his lifelong passion for Dante. He took private lessons from Signorina Esposito as well. Those lessons at 21 Ely Place were then caricatured in the short story 'Dante and the Lobster'. Kedar Street is not a real location but an anagram of 'darke' or Hebrew for 'black'. Keeping this in mind, the name may simply have been selected because "bianca" means "white woman" in Italian. Little is recorded about her other than "'a tribute to her eyes. Very warm.'" Vivian Mercier, who knew Beckett personally, writes: "Although I do not recall his ever using the phrase, Beckett unquestionably regards the eyes as the windows of the soul."

Krapp’s father, the only other man mentioned in the play, is spoken of only very briefly. The expression "Last illness" suggests he has not been a well man for some time and dies while Krapp is in his twenties. His own father, William Beckett, died of a heart attack in June 1933, when Beckett was twenty-seven.
 * Krapp's father

Beckett's first love, his cousin, Peggy Sinclair, had "deep green eyes and [had a] passionate love of green clothing." An allusion to Peggy Sinclair also appears in Dream of Fair to Middling Women in Smeraldina, the "little emerald". Although the relationship is often cited as being a little one-sided, Beckett does recall: "Oh, Peggy didn’t need any chasing."
 * The girl in the green coat

This character does the majority of the talking throughout the play. His voice is contained on Tape 5 from Box 3. His voice is strong and rather pompous. He has celebrated his birthday alone in an empty wine house before returning home to consume three bananas. As has become his practice on his birthday he makes a tape looking back at who he was, assessing who he is and anticipating what might be to come. His is as disparaging of the young man he was in his twenties as he was then of the youth he had been thinking about when he made that earlier tape. He records the death of his mother, an epiphany at the end of a pier and an idyllic moment in a punt.
 * Krapp (aged 39)

This character is based on Miss Beamish, an eccentric novelist from Connacht whom Beckett had met in Roussillon, while hiding during World War II. "Whether the real Miss Beamish did actually sing regularly every evening is ... debatable. Beckett did not remember this."
 * Old Mrs McGlome

There appears to be no direct correlation between this character and anyone living. The black-and-white imagery is strong here: her white uniform and the "big black hooded perambulator." Krapp also remembers this woman’s eyes as being "[l]ike ... chrysolite!"
 * The dark young beauty

Rosemary Pountney observes Beckett changed "moonstone" to chrysolite, an olive-green coloured mineral, in Typescript 4.

She observes also that Beckett made "a direct connection ... with Othello, a play in which dark and light imagery is central," as "in the margin of the text that he used for the 1973 London production," on page 15 where the word 'chrysolite' occurs ... he writes: If heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite

I’d not have sold her for it

Othello V2.

"Like Othello, too," Pountney continues, "Krapp has lost his love through his own folly."

Beckett’s mother, May, died on 25 August 1950 in the Merrion Nursing Home which overlooked Dublin’s Grand Canal. Beckett had made the trip over in the early summer to be with her. By 24 July medical opinion confirmed that she was dying. During that last long month he used "to walk disconsolately alone along the towpath of the Grand Canal."
 * Krapp's mother

Towards the end she was oblivious to his presence. Her death took place while he was sitting on a bench by the canal. "At a certain point he happened to look up. The blinds of his mother’s window, a dirty red-brown affair, was down. She was dead." A drawn blind, an old custom signifying death, also makes an appearance in Rockaby: "let down the blind and down".

When Krapp’s mother died, he was throwing a ball for a little white dog. He says he will keep it forever: "But I gave it away to the dog." Significantly the ball is black to contrast with the white of the dog. In All Strange Away a "small grey punctured rubber ball" is the last object contemplated before Fancy dies. The ball had already appeared in All That Fall: Jerry returns "a kind of ball" to Mr. Rooney. Although not an obvious symbol of death, this ball is a significant motif of childhood grief for Beckett though none of his biographers propose that the presence of the dog is anything more than artistic license.
 * The little white dog

Beckett makes the relationship of this woman to Krapp clear when "[i]n 1975, directing Pierre Chabert in Paris, Beckett said: 'I thought of writing a play on the opposite situation, with Mrs Krapp, the girl in the punt, nagging away behind him, in which case his failure and his solitude would be exactly the same.'" In her biography of Beckett, Deirdre Bair deduces that "the girl in the punt" may be Peggy Sinclair because of the references to "Effi" and to "the Baltic": in July 1929 Beckett vacationed with the Sinclairs "in one of the smaller resort towns along the Baltic Sea. Summer, traditionally the time for light reading, found Peggy tearfully engrossed in Theodor Fontane's novel, Effi Briest. Beckett read it too, but with more detachment than Peggy, who wept and suffered as Effi's infidelity ended her marriage." Talking to James Knowlson, a few days before his death, Beckett said that he "did not remember the scene this way, however, denying that girl in the boat ... had anything at all to do with his cousin, Peggy." Knowlson feels "that there is little doubt the source for the girl with the haunting eyes is Ethna MacCarthy. For, as Dream of Fair to Middling Women had made clear ... the 'Alba', who, on Beckett’s own admission, was closely modelled on Ethna, had eyes like dark, deep pools." Beckett left no doubt however when he told Jean Martin, whilst rehearsing the play in 1970, that the girl was modelled on Ethna. On 11 December 1957 Beckett learned that Ethna was terminally ill and regularly wrote uncharacteristically long letters until her death. When he completed the play he wrote her: "I’ve written in English a stage monologue for Pat Magee which I think you will like if no one else."
 * The girl in the punt

At one point in the recollection, the young Krapp leans over the young woman to shade her from the sun. "Let me in," he says. This caused the Lord Chamberlain some concerns when the play was first presented before him to grant a license. He believed that what was being suggested was a desire for sexual penetration and was not convinced that Beckett was simply alluding to her eyes. It was not until a mere three weeks before the play's opening that the objection was dropped. In 1982 Beckett, in response to a similar suggestion from one of James Knowlson's postgraduate students, "said with a chuckle, 'Tell her to read her texts more carefully. She'll see that Krapp would need to have a penis at an angle of a hundred and eighty degrees to make coitus possible in the position he is in!'" ––a position that Rosette Lamont proposes also "suggests that of a suckling babe."

 * Krapp (aged 69)

Beckett would not be 69 until 1975 so, from his perspective, with Krapp a proxy for him, the action is set in the future. The first line of the play explicitly sets it 'in the future', although nothing onstage reveals this. Beckett wrote this play shortly before he turned 52 years old. As it happens, with Waiting for Godot, success had found him but, at 39, the future must have seemed a lot bleaker for the writer, the Second World War was ending and all Beckett had had published were a few poems, a collection of short stories and the novel, Murphy. Beckett had this to say about the drained old man we see onstage: "Krapp sees very clearly that he’s through with his work, with love and religion." He told Rick Cluchey, whom he directed in 1977, that Krapp was "in no way senile [but has] something frozen about him [and is] filled up to his teeth with bitterness." "Habit, the great deadener" has proven more tenacious than inspiration. His "present concerns revolve around the gratification of those very bodily appetites that, earlier, he had resolved should be out of his life. Eating bananas and drinking have become a [daily routine]. Of the physical activities that he once considered excesses only sex has come to play a reduced part in his lonely existence" in the form of periodic visits from an old prostitute.

Although this is a play about memory, the sixty-nine-year-old Krapp himself remembers very little. Virtually all the recollections come from the tape. As evidenced most clearly in the novel Murphy, Beckett had a decent understanding of a variety of mental illnesses including Korsakoff's Alcoholic Syndrome––"A hypomaniac teaching slosh to a Korsakow's syndrome." ––which is characterised by powerful amnesic symptoms accompanied by intestinal obstruction.

In his focus on chronic alcohol consumption, Narinder Kapur explains in Memory Disorders in Clinical Practice that it can lead to marked memory loss and generalised cognitive defects, as well as "disorientation for time and also place". More recent memories are likely to be forgotten than remote memories, for "memory loss shows a temporal gradient with greater sparing of items from earlier years." Krapp's gathering of red-berried holly in the dingle could be an example of the "relatively intact remote memory" that preceded Krapp's apparent addiction to alcohol.

Krapp is not a textbook case. He is an individual with his own individual symptomology but he is more than a list of symptoms. Bananas contain pectin, a soluble fibre that can help normalise movement through the digestive tract and ease constipation. Bananas can also aggravate constipation especially in young children. It depends what the root cause of the problem is. They are also high in Vitamins A and C as well as niacin, riboflavin and thiamine and one of the root causes of Korsakoff's Syndrome is thiamine deficiency; eating bananas would be good for him. It is easy to get caught up in this kind of over-analysis to the detriment of the play as a whole. "[A]ttempts to demonstrate that Beckett's characters conform to specific psychological syndromes so often turn into will-o-the-wisp pursuits. Certainly, Beckett would not deny that psychologists have offered very useful descriptions of mental activity. But their theories are typically no more than initial steps in an understanding of mental processes, fragmented bits of knowledge which should not be taken for universal principles." It is important to remember that Krapp has not simply forgotten his past but he has consciously and systematically rejected it as one way of reassuring himself that he has made the right decisions in "his yearly word letting."

In the past year Krapp has been re-reading Fontane's Effi Briest, "a page a day, with tears again," he says, "Could have been happy with her, up there on the Baltic...." Existing only on the printed page this fantasy woman is perhaps the most black-and-white of all Krapp’s women. Like the girl in the punt and the nursemaid mentioned earlier, perhaps to contrast with his inner fire, "Once again Beckett situates Krapp's memory on some side near the water."
 * Effi Briest

Just as Krapp’s name is a vulgar pun, so is the name Beckett gave to the woman who visits him from time to time, whom he describes as a "bony old ghost of a whore." As Fanny is an "old ghost," all Krapp's women are figuratively "ghosts, really, dependent for their existence on Krapp's bitter-sweet recording of them," according to Katherine Worth.
 * Fanny

"Fanny" is a slang British expression for the female genitals – woman reduced to a function. "Fanny" is also a commonly used diminutive of Frances, and Beckett occasionally referred to his aunt, Frances "Cissie" Sinclair, as "Fanny."

Krapp refers to her visits as "better than a kick in the crutch." In the 1985 television version, Beckett changed this phrase to "better than the finger and the thumb," an unambiguous reference to masturbation that would never have escaped the British Lord Chamberlain in the 1950s.

In an earlier draft of the play Beckett "uses 'beacon' and 'anemometer' rather than 'lighthouse' and 'wind-gauge'. The anemometer on the East Pier of Dún Laoghaire was one of the world's first.  [It is] widely regarded as a mirror reflection of Beckett's own revelation. Yet it is different both in circumstance and kind."
 * Krapp's "vision at last", on the pier at Dún Laoghaire

"Beckett wrote to Richard Ellmann: 'All the jetty and howling wind are imaginary. It happened to me, summer 1945, in my mother's little house, named New Place, across the road from Cooldrinagh.'"

He summarised what this experience signified for him: "I realised that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding."

Beckett has applied character to non-human elements in his plays before, e.g. the light in Play, the music in Words and Music. "Beckett instructed the actor Pierre Chabert in his 1975 Paris production of the play 'to become as much as possible one body with the machine ... The spool is his whole life.'" Krapp no longer owns the memories on the tapes. His mind is no longer capable of holding onto them. The recorder also serves as proxy. When John Hurt, as Krapp, is transfixed by the retelling of the events in the punt he literally cradles the machine as if it were the woman, recalling Magee’s original performance; Beckett took pains to point this out to Alan Schneider, who was at the time preparing his own version of the play, in a letter dated 21 November 1958, and incorporated the gesture in future productions in which he was involved.
 * The tape recorder

Later, on 4 January 1960, Beckett wrote a more detailed letter describing another unexpected revelation of that earlier performance, "the beautiful and quite accidental effect in London of the luminous eye burning up as the machine runs on in silence and the light goes down."

Cyril Cusack
Cyril Cusack played Krapp in a June 1960 production at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, later at the Empire Theatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and in a television production directed by Prudence Fitzgerald and broadcast on 13 November 1963 on the British television program Festival.

David Kelly
In 1996, the Gate Theatre visited Lincoln Center in New York where David Kelly performed ‘Krapp,’ receiving standing ovations at every performance. Kelly had first performed the play in Dublin in 1959 and the original recordings of his ‘young self’ were discovered. These were painstakingly remastered by Noel Storey at Beacon Studios in Dublin to be used on stage. It is believed to be the only time that real 30 year old recordings have been used. The New York Times broke their own rules by saying in their review that "Kelly’s performance is the best that will ever be".

Patrick Magee
The play was first performed as a curtain raiser to Endgame (from 28 October to 29 November 1958) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Donald McWhinnie and starring Patrick Magee. It ran for 38 performances. This production was recreated for television in 1972, again directed by McWhinnie and starring Magee.

Beckett told Magee, the original Krapp, that his "voice was the one which he heard inside his mind. Thus it seems likely that the return to English was a matter of expediency because of the English-speaking actor."

"Magee had a harsh, gravely voice which had little superficial charm but had a hypnotic effect on the listener ... He was grey-haired but ageless and could combine debility with menace, as Beckett characters with their suppressed violence often do ... [H]e had developed a rather strange accent with only faint Irish overtones and prolonged vowel sounds, The general effect was strangely déclassé but still indubitably Irish and thus ideally fitted for the performance of Beckett ... As an actor, he had the good sense to see that one played Beckett for the weight and mood of the words and the situation without bothering about the ultimate philosophical import."

Donald Davis
The Canadian actor Donald Davis played Krapp in the North American premiere production of Krapp's Last Tape at the Provincetown Playhouse, with Davis winning an Obie Award in 1960 for his performance in the play "as the lonely, solitary Krapp, playing the tapes of his life and re-experiencing decades of regret." Later, Krapp's Last Tape, directed by Alan Schneider, was a long-running performance at the Provincetown Playhouse, for which a 33 RPM recording was issued (see article and liner notes).

Jack MacGowran
In 1971, Alan Schneider directed Jack MacGowran in a videotaped production that was meant to be broadcast on WNET, but for some reason was rejected and never shown and "languished in a closet" until found in 1988 and painstakingly restored.

Rick Cluchey
Co-Founder of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, was directed by Beckett in 1977 in Berlin and later videotaped in 1988 as part of the Beckett Directs Beckett collection (again directed by Beckett with Walter Asmus).

Max Wall
Max Wall performed Krapp on a number of occasions, including London's Greenwich Theatre (1975 – directed by Patrick Magee ) and Riverside Studios (1986).

John Hurt
John Hurt performed the role of Krapp for the version directed by Atom Egoyan for the Beckett on Film project, which was broadcast on television in 2001 and available on DVD in the box set or individually. Before that there was a production at the Ambassadors Theatre, London from 25th January to 11th March 2000. In November 2011, directed by Michael Colgan, he reprised the role pre-Broadway at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC followed by a limited Broadway run. He used the tape recordings from the 2001 production in the performance. In December 2011, again directed by Colgan, he reprised the role at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City as part of the BAM 2011 Next Wave Festival. He once again took up the role in Dublin's Gate Theatre for 10 performances in March 2013. Charles McNulty lauded it as a "magnificent rendition".

Harold Pinter

As part of the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre, in October 2006, directed by Ian Rickson, English playwright Harold Pinter performed the role of Krapp in a sold-out limited run of nine performances to great critical acclaim;  a performance of this production was broadcast on BBC Four. In this production, Krapp is confined to a motorized wheelchair and the banana business at the beginning is cut; Krapp also uses two tape machines, one to listen to his past recording and the other to record his new tape.

Corin Redgrave
Corin Redgrave performed the role of Krapp for BBC Radio 3 in 2006 a few months after he had suffered a major heart attack. The production was rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 16 May 2010 as part of a double bill with a 2006 production of Embers.

Brian Dennehy
Brian Dennehy performed the role of Krapp during the 2008 Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in 2010 at the Goodman Theatre of Chicago from 16 January through 28 February and in 2011 at the Long Wharf Theatre of New Haven, all three times directed by Jennifer Tarver. The Beckett one-act was paired in Stratford and Chicago with Eugene O'Neill's Hughie (directed by Robert Falls), also a one-act, and also performed by Dennehy, in the lead role of "Erie Smith". A Broadway run was also planned, but not realized. Dennehy's double bill of Hughie/Krapp's Last Tape was performed at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, this time directed by Steven Robman, from 5 November – 16 December 2018.

Michael Gambon
In April 2010 Irish actor Michael Gambon continued his relationship with both Beckett and the Gate Theatre when he returned to the Dublin stage as Krapp for a limited run which was followed by a transfer to London's West End.

Richard Bremmer
Richard Bremmer took on the eponymous role of Krapp at the Bristol Old Vic between April and May 2012, receiving critical acclaim across the board. This was in a double bill with A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter in which Bremmer also appeared. They were both directed by Simon Godwin.

Gerard Murphy
In 2012, at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre, Gerard Murphy performed the role, even though he was suffering spinal cord compression due to prostate cancer.

Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson performed Krapp at the Barbican, London, in June 2015. He also performed "Krapp" at the Ardhowen Theatre in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland in August 2012 (directing himself), at the Alexander Kasser Theater on the campus of Montclair State University in March 2016 and at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2019 (which he also directed). In January 2018, he performed Krapp in the Santiago a Mil International Festival in Santiago de Chile, which he also directed (co-director Charles Chemin).

Joe Gistirak
Joe Gistirak played Krapp at the Above Board Theatre in 1978. It was directed by Michael Corrigan.

Bob Nasmith
In 2018, Bob Nasmith played Krapp to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of Theatre Passe Muraille in a production directed by Mac Fyfe.

James Hayes
James Hayes played Krapp in a 2020 production directed by Trevor Nunn at the Jermyn Street Theatre in a double bill with The Old Tune (adapted by Beckett from a radio play by Robert Pinget).

Dennis Leroy Kangalee
In November of 2022 writer, actor, filmmaker Dennis Leroy Kangalee, performed Krapp at Studio 111 in Brooklyn in his own conception, directed by Vagabond, and produced by Susan Kingsland on behalf of the Kangalee Arts Ensemble with Audio Visual Terrorism. Author, poet Magus Magnus wrote that his awe had been "revived" upon seeing the production.

Daniel Rocha
In June 2021, playwright and director Daniel Rocha presented his version of Krapp in a show titled [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX1LijYwVog EU! KRAPP…]. This version by Daniel Rocha is even bolder in marking Krapp as a character isolated from the world and coexistence, being a show in which the audience is constantly provoked. The show remains available to circulate, including abroad.

Reception
Krapp’s Last Tape is one of Beckett’s most frequently performed dramas and has been referred to as "one of his most personal works". Daniel Sack considers the part of Krapp to be "one of the greatest in the English language."

Media recordings
Beckett opposed vehemently the transfer of some of his works from one medium to another, but he did not oppose such recordings of Krapp's Last Tape as much as he did others. For example, "A gramophone recording (New York: Spoken Arts #788, 1960), based on the original American production, was distributed by Argo (RG 220), and by HEAR, Home Educational Records, London (1964)," (this recording starred Donald Davis) and "It was often adapted for television with his encouragement." The first BBC version was produced by Peter Luke, featuring Cyril Cusack (13 November 1963). Approached by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, to permit a television version of his 1969 Schiller-Theatre Das letzte Band [the German title of the play], Beckett wrote a set of "Suggestions for TV Krapp", which "was broadcast [on] 28th October 1969."

The play has subsequently been broadcast on radio, turned into an opera (see below) and filmed as part of the Beckett on Film project and for the DVD of Pinter's Royal Court performance, both of which have been shown on television.

Musical adaptations
There have been several musical adaptations of Krapp's Last Tape, most notably the opera Krapp, ou, La dernière bande by composer Marcel Mihalovici. American composer Earl Kim alludes to the work within his Gooseberries, she said (1967), part of the four-part cycle Exercises en Route. The Hungarian composer Gyula Csapó has created the work Krapp's Last Tape –- after Samuel Beckett (1975) loosely inspired by Beckett's play. This theatrical work is for a "violinist-actor," a tape recorder, four spotlights and a sine wave generator. In 1999, the English experimental composer, Michael Parsons, adapted Krapp's Last Tape for piano, two pre-recorded pianos, and voice on tape. The piece, specifically written for John Tilbury, was called Krapp Music.

Allusions in popular culture
The play was memorably parodied in the television sketch comedy The Fast Show, in which – as a reference to Max Wall – fictional music hall comedian Arthur Atkinson played a comically more stoic version of Krapp. It is also the title of a track on Fredrik Thordendal's solo album Sol Niger Within. A prefiguring of the play, titled, "Krapp, 39" written and performed by Michael Laurence and directed by George Demas, premiered at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival and begins its commercial run Off Broadway at The Soho Playhouse in New York City on 13 January 2009. The piece follows an actor's obsession with the character Krapp. In the 2013 Canadian film Meetings with a Young Poet, the character of Lucia Martell wants the rights to the piece to transform it into a one-woman play as a vehicle for herself.

The play is mentioned in Charlie Kaufman's 2008 film Synecdoche, New York and in Spalding Gray's A Personal History of the American Theatre, a 1985 monologue directed for television by Skip Blumberg.

title: Krapp's Last Tape


text:
Shooting Stars (1993 TV series)

Shooting Stars is a British television comedy panel game broadcast on BBC Two as a pilot in 1993, then as three full series from 1995 to 1997, then on BBC Choice from January to December 2002 with two series before returning to BBC Two for another three series from 2008 until its cancellation in 2011. Created and hosted by double-act Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, it uses the panel show format but with the comedians' often slapstick, surreal and anarchic humour that does not rely on rules in order to function, with the pair apparently ignoring existing rules or inventing new ones as and when the mood takes them.

Format
The basic format of the show is that of a conventional panel game. Hosts Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer ask questions of the two teams with points awarded for "correct" answers; however, scoring is largely arbitrary. Each episode is produced by editing together excerpts of a longer session. Rounds include "true or false", the film clip round, the impressions round, and "The Dove from Above". In the impressions round, contestants have to guess what song Reeves is singing (incomprehensibly) in the style of an incoherent nightclub singer.

The Dove From Above
"The Dove from Above" is a large prop animal suspended above the contestants merely for the purpose of bearing six key words for further questions. Guests would be prompted to "coo" down the dove. Alternatives to the dove in various series included "The Blue Suitcase" in the pilot, "The Crow from Below", "The Vest from the West", Matt Lucas as "George Dawes from the Upper Floors," "The Wonderful, Wonderful Car", "Donald Cox – The Sweaty Fox," "The Fly from Upon High" and "The Beast from the East."

In the "Dove from Above" round and subsequent versions of the round, if a contestant answers incorrectly, Vic says "UVAVU" and pulls a silly face. If the contestant chooses a certain, prize-winning option, he pulls another face and says "ERANU". The prize is invariably a bizarre and practically useless device.

Occasionally, there would be a "Maverick Round" where a guest would have to stand centre stage and represent something "via the medium of dance", or "the gift of the air guitar". They would then be judged by scorekeeper George Dawes (Lucas), who would invariably award them no points.

Reeves would often tell a joke, much to everyone's disappointment. The joke would always fall flat, often accompanied by tumbleweed blowing across the floor of the studio. Occasionally, someone else would tell the joke and would be met with uproarious laughter, much to Reeves' anger.

Impressions round
The impressions round saw a "random light" pick a contestant at random, and then they had to do an impression of a celebrity. In the pilot this was called by Reeves, "random factor". Other elements of the impressions round included the aforementioned club style singing. George Dawes played the drums while Reeves did this.

Film clip round
The film clip round always included a clip that was related to the question, but the answer to the question was never shown in the film just like the lyrics of George Dawes' songs, despite Bob Mortimer as a running gag saying to watch or listen carefully. In one episode, Mark Lamarr's team were shown a clip from Citizen Smith (instead of a comedy clip created by the Shooting Stars team), and were totally unaware the question would relate directly to the clip. A serious question was asked requesting what a man's T-shirt read, only for Mark to make something up and then Vic saying his traditional "UVAVU!" wrong answer catchphrase. One of the most memorable film clips was a spoof of The Naked Chef, with Matt Lucas playing the part of Jamie Oliver, and Ulrika Jonsson playing the part of his then wife-to-be Juliette Norton. In the sketch, Lucas plays on highlighting Jamie's then constant use of the word pukka, constantly using the word while making sandwiches for a party in which he has invited his friends along (which he often used to do on his show, including the Sainsbury's adverts). He keeps saying that he'll use something later which he has discarded such as an eggshell, while Juliette twice appears asking if he would like any help, only to be turned away. At the end of the film clip, he throws a lot of chips in his motorcycle crash helmet.

Final round
Whichever teams "wins" the round according to the scoring system "wins" £1 per point, and the captain must nominate a teammate to do a silly stunt for an alleged £5 per point. This is a timed round, often marked by Vic or Bob stating, "We don't know how much time we have, but when the time is up, you'll hear this sound," prompting George to say a silly phrase such as "Come on, come on! Clear it up, woman!" The credits then roll after this round as Vic and Bob sing their goodbyes.

Humour
The title of the show is a pun on the fact that much of the humour is at the expense of the guest stars. To prove this point, in the pilot episode at the opening song (singing "let's start Shooting Stars"), Vic and Bob are holding shotguns and fire these into the stars.

Participants
There are two teams – Team A and Team B. Each team has a regular team captain – originally Mark Lamarr and Ulrika Jonsson – and two celebrity guests on each team. Lamarr left the series in 1997 as he disliked being in too many quiz shows at once (at the time he was hosting Never Mind the Buzzcocks), and was replaced by novelist Will Self when the series returned in 2002. At the same time comedian Johnny Vegas was brought in as a regular guest on Jonsson's team, where he had a pint of Guinness on his desk where all the other contestants had water. Self was replaced by Jack Dee for the 2008 15th Anniversary Special and for the 2009 series, which also saw Lucas' character, George Dawes, replaced by Angelos Epithemiou, a creation of comedian Dan Renton Skinner. Contestants are often addressed by their surnames, in reference to University Challenge.

In addition to the 'regulars', the panel consisted of other celebrities from music, sports, politics and other fields. Some of the most memorable episodes included members who were clearly unaware of the format; on one particularly famous episode, Dallas star Larry Hagman appeared on the show and was in a state of constant bemusement. Writing in The Guardian, Nancy Banks-Smith described him as looking "like a man in a nightmare".

Until the 2010 series, the "score" was kept by George Dawes, an overgrown, ranting, drumming baby played by comedian Matt Lucas (occasionally, George's mother Marjorie – also played by Lucas – appears instead. She also appears in Little Britain). His arrival at the start of the show would be accompanied by the words, "He's a baby!" sung to the tune of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog". He would also provide a sound effect to signal the end of timed rounds: in earlier series this was a simple scream, but later became random phrases ("Leakage"), sometimes in regional accents ("That's it; I'm turning the car around and we're going back to Dorset!"), or advertising slogans ("Have you ever been to a Harvester before?"). In the later series he would also perform "George's Song," on which subject questions would follow. These included "Lesbians", "Everybody's Talkin' About Football", "Hip Hop Is The Best", "1942" (appeared in the 15-year special, while being a song about inventions such as floors, trees, shoes and the 'flu) and even a rendition of the Rentaghost theme song. One of the most famous songs is "Peanuts", with George shouting "Peanuts!" every so often to a backing track, while corpsing. The costume Lucas wore for this performance later became an inspiration for his Little Britain character Andy. Another notable song was "Thank You Baked Potato", in which a potato gave him helpful advice. Lucas later used a revised version of this song in a fundraising effort for the National Health Service, during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Lucas quit the programme in the 2010 series due to scheduling conflicts with his other projects, and the role of scorekeeper was taken over by Epithemiou.

Most appearances
Apart from the Team Captains, Johnny Vegas made the most appearances with 19 as he was a permanent panellist on Ulrika's team during the 2002 series. Carol Vorderman made a total of 3 appearances and Jarvis Cocker, Stephen Fry, Zoe Ball, Les Dennis and Sara Cox each made two appearances (although Fry made a short appearance in the 2002 Christmas special). Martin Clunes and Robbie Williams both made two appearances as a panellist, once on Series One and once on video exclusive Unviewed and Nude, Clunes was also featured as a "mystery celebrity" in series two.

Merchandise

 * In November 1996 the first Shooting Stars VHS was released entitled Shooting Stars - Unviewed and Nude.
 * 1996 saw the release of the Shooting Stars book and CD game. Published by BBC Books in hard cover, this 120-page book retailed at £9.99, and featured various rounds from the shows, as well as a 45-minute CD of the Club Singer round, allowing you to play a full game of Shooting Stars in your own home.
 * In March 1999 the second Shooting Stars VHS was released as a double VHS along with the first one. It was called Shooting Stars - Unviewed And Nude & Unpicked And Plucked.
 * In November 2009, the first Shooting Stars DVD was released, containing the complete series 6. The complete seventh series was released on DVD the following year.

Relaunch
An anniversary edition entitled All New Shooting Stars was shown on 30 December 2008, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the show. Ulrika Jonsson returned as captain, with Jack Dee as the replacement team captain. Matt Lucas also reprised his George Dawes character for the episode. Guests for the episode were Peter Jones, Kate Garraway, Christine Walkden, and Dizzee Rascal.

On 3 April 2009, it was announced that the show would return for a full sixth series. Most of the original cast returned along with Jack Dee, who continued as a permanent team captain after his appearance on the anniversary special. It began on BBC Two and BBC HD on 26 August 2009.

The relaunched series altered the format in a number of ways:

 * There are now only three rounds; a general round, the Dove from Above round, and the quick-fire round. The first general round usually contains "true or false" questions, but contains other questions as well, including a regular "Who is Hitler" question in which the contestants must identify which celebrity has been disguised as Adolf Hitler.
 * The Dove from Above has only four categories, meaning that all are exhausted in every show. The rules for "Eranu" and "Uvavu" are still read out (usually with the final -u extended into a reference or comedy phrase), but these phrases are not actually used during the round, and no "hidden special prizes" are ever awarded in spite of Vic saying that they exist and every category of the Dove being used in every show. The phrases, and the references to a special prize, are finally dropped entirely in the last two episodes.
 * The four categories of the Dove always correspond to classic theme skits: one is always "George's Song", another is always "a song in the club style", and another is always either a spoof video clip or a performance by the "Hartlepool Film Re-enactment Society" in which Vic and Bob use a wendy house and dolls on the end of sticks to play out a skit featuring characters from a well-known film.
 * Other regular skits integrated into the show include a conversation with kebab van owner "Angelos Epithemiou" (actually comedian Renton Skinner), and an attempt to "cheer up Jack Dee" by playing him a song using drain pipes.
 * The prize awarded for the final game, rather than being surreal, is instead laughably small: examples include "a cassette of Reggae", "a can of tropical drink", and "this wonderful toothpick holder". There was also an occasion where a video of an exotic destination was shown on a screen only for the prize to be able to see the remainder of that video.

Shooting Stars returned in July 2010 for a seventh series. This series made the following further changes:

 * Following Matt Lucas's decision to leave the programme, Angelos Epithemiou became the scorekeeper. His entrance music is Shaggy's "Boombastic"; rather than George Dawes' drum kit, he keeps the scores from behind his "Dream Machine", a combination of a DJ station and a pound shop. It still includes a miniature electronic drum kit which he uses to accompany Vic's "songs in the club style". Angelos always plays a short burst of music (an excerpt from "Drop The Pressure (Jack Beats 'Rinsed Out Rave' Remix)" by Project Bassline) before announcing the first round's scores, and brings in a plastic bag, the contents of which are revealed between rounds during the show.
 * There are now four rounds: the opening general round, the "clip round" (which has only one question, opened to both teams, on the presented clip), the Dove from Above and the quick-fire round. The video clips (and the "Hartlepool re-enactments") are removed from the Dove round and replaced by "celebrity questions", in which a question is asked in a video clip by Vic or Bob while dressed up as another celebrity.
 * "George's Song" - as one of the options on the Dove - is replaced by "Angelos Epithemou's Variety Showcase" in which Angelos performs a short skit, often involving dancing or a parody of a magic show. Spoof magic tricks appear frequently elsewhere in this series, including a regular routine with a magic box at the beginning of each show (although many of the tricks are obviously done by camera cuts or editing).
 * Ulrika is introduced by the singing of a spoof song to the melody of "Agadoo".
 * In at least one round, an unoccupied pair of trousers will "walk" unattended across the studio. This is completely ignored by everyone else. In one episode, this is replaced by a taxidermy Great Dane which quietly drifts up behind one of the contestants' podiums.
 * Shooting Stars returned for an eighth series on 8 August 2011. It now featured Archie Andrews, a puppet who walks and "hands" the question to the contestant on the left of Ulrika.
 * It was announced by Bob Mortimer on 15 November 2011 that the BBC had cancelled further series of the show. The BBC have confirmed that the show has been axed.

title: Shooting Stars (1993 TV series)


text:
Rough for Theatre II

Rough for Theatre II (also known simply as Theatre II) is a short play by Samuel Beckett. "Although this discarded piece of theatre is dated 'circa 1960' in End and Odds, a manuscript from two years earlier exists in Trinity College, Dublin, Library. This situates a first version, written in French [as Fragment de théâtre II] and different from that eventually published in 1976 as between the English plays Krapp's Last Tape and Embers." It is rarely produced.

Synopsis
Two bureaucrats, Bertrand (A) and then Morvan (B) enter a sixth floor apartment where they find Croker (C) standing centre stage in front of an open window with his back to the audience, clearly on the point of throwing himself out of it. They are there to carry out a pro bono investigation into "the temperament, character and past life of this potential suicide."

A and B continue, in an almost comic fashion, with the desk lamps flickering on and off, and with a didactic analysis from B of the recounts he carries in his folder. In the end, the pair condemn Croker to jump. When A goes to the window to inspect Croker, however, he is surprised by something inexplicable that causes him to remove his handkerchief and bring it timidly to the would-be jumper's face. The ending is left open to various interpretations such as Croker may be crying, smiling, was dead prior to A and B's arrival or else died during the process.

title: Rough for Theatre II