Oral Presentation- Symposium 12th International Mammalogical Congress

A brief history of the international theriological/mammalogical congresses (#344)

William Z. Lidicker, Jr. 1
  1. University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL THERIOLOGICAL/MAMMALOGICAL CONGRESSES

I will review the history of the 12 ITC/IMC conferences plus the two antecedent symposia held in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czechia). These latter two international conferences paved the way for ITC-1. Collectively these meetings spanned a time interval from 1960 to 2017. I attended the second of the two Brno symposia as well as all of the subsequent congresses. Emphasis will be on the role this international cooperation in mammalogical science played in the dissolution of the “Iron Curtain” in Europe, on the leading personalities involved, and on the history of the organizational structure of the program.