Corinne Heyning Laverty

Corinne Adams Heyning Laverty (Com ’80) published North America’s Galapagos: The Historic Channel Islands Biological Survey. The narrative nonfiction book recounts the story of a group of researchers, naturalists, adventurers, cooks, immigrants, and scientifically curious teenagers who came together in the late 1930s to embark upon a series of ambitious expeditions never before, or since, attempted. Their mission: to piece together the broken shards of the Channel Islands’ history and evolution.

Sometimes called “North America’s Galapagos,” each island supports unique ecosystems with varied flora and fauna and differing human histories. Readers follow the scientists behind closed museum doors and to all eight islands, spending time in the hot and dusty, or wet and foggy, field with them, rejoicing in their successes, cringing at their failures and shortcomings.

A lack of funds and dearth of qualified personnel dogged the pre-WWII expeditions, but only after America enters the war and the researchers are stranded on one of the islands is the survey aborted, their work left for future scientists to complete. This saga of ambition, adventure and discovery is juxtaposed against the fresh successes of a new generation of Channel Island scholars, thereby illuminating the scientific process and revealing remarkable modern discoveries that are changing our ideas of how the Americas were populated. Upon completing this book, the lasting impression the reader may have might not be the raw beauty and uniqueness of these islands, though they will certainly gain that, nor even a greater appreciation for the grandiose and challenging undertaking the scientists attempted, rather, the reader may come to recognize that the larger story of the scientific process continues long after individual efforts cease.

Laverty’s lecture schedule can be found under the “Events” tab of my website: https://www.channelislandscalifornia.com/