Daily Podcasts Video Research

A British spy, a notorious murderer, the Indiana Jones of the insect world, and a very Jewish history

JL;DR SUMMARY Author Joel Greenberg explores the adventurous lives of Jewish naturalists and environmentalists who defy the stereotype of Jews as strictly urban intellectuals. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

Jewish HistoryStereotypesBotanistsEnvironmentalismJewish NaturalistsAaron AaronsohnNathan LeopoldLibbie Henrietta HymanScientific Achievement

Places mentioned

Chicago, Illinois, United States
"Philip Hershkovitz in his lab at Chicagos Field Museum in 1955."
Florida, United States
"Judith Winston, a research associate at the Smithsonian Marine Station in Florida, tells the life stories of a group of Jewish researchers, naturalists and environmentalists."
Westmont, Illinois, United States
"Greenberg, a research associate of the Field Museum and the Chicago Academy of Sciences Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, book author and avid birder who lives in Westmont, IL."
Illinois, United States
"Notorious murderer Nathan Leopold was also known as an avid birder. Photo by Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images."
Puerto Rico
"When he was paroled to Puerto Rico, he got a masters degree in public health and wrote Checklist of Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands."
New York, United States
"She left Chicago and moved to New York, where she worked on her greatest accomplishment a six-volume compendium called The Invertebrates."
Ethiopia
"Another time he was in Ethiopia and he and a colleague went out at night looking for hippopotamuses."
Brazil
"Hershkovitz went on his last field trip to Brazil when he was 82 years old."
Colombia
"Another time he took his wife and their oldest daughter to Colombia for 18 months."
Mexico
"But when I was at the University of Arizona, a group of us birders went to this remote area in southern Mexico."

Support this source

This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 82128
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-05-13 05:31:03 UTC
Curated 2026-05-13 08:31:26 UTC