Head and shoulders image of Dr. William J. Maher, Biology.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. William Joseph Maher was born on 10 March 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. After a brief stint in the United States military, he studied biology at Purdue University, graduating with a BSc in 1951. He earned an MA in Zoology from the University of Michigan in 1953. For the next two years Dr. Maher was with the U.S. Geological Survey as a research technician working on a permafrost project. In 1955 he returned to his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Maher began the ecological study of the pomarine, parasistic, and long-tailed jaegers in northern Alaska, earning his PhD in 1961. Dr. Maher joined the Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan as a visiting assistant professor in 1963. The following year he was appointed associate professor rising to the rank of full professor in 1974. Dr. Maher retired in 1994 and was named Professor Emeritus. Specializing in vertebrate taxonomy and ornithology, his research took him to many and far flung locations including the Canadian and American Arctic, Antarctica and Australia. Dr. Maher died on 28 July 2016 in Parksville, British Columbia, at age 89.