James Bond (ornithologist)

James Bond (Philadelphia, United States, January 4, 1900 - Philadelphia, February 14, 1989) was an American ornithologist whose name was used by the writer Ian Fleming for his fictional spy James Bond.

The real Bond was born in Philadelphia and worked as an ornithologist for the Academy of Natural Sciences in that city, becoming the bird curator. He was an expert on Caribbean birds and wrote what is considered the definitive work on the subject, A Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936, the fifth edition of which is still available. is available (ISBN 0-618-00210-3).

Ian Fleming, who was an amateur bird watcher living in Jamaica, was familiar with the Bond book and chose that name for his Casino Royale character in 1953, apparently because he was looking for a name make it as common as possible. Fleming wrote to the wife of the real Bond: "It seemed to me that this short, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon but at the same time very masculine name was just what I needed, and thus a second James Bond was born." In the twentieth James Bond film, Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan, playing the fictional Bond, is seen examining the book Birds of the West Indies in a scene in Havana, Cuba, and he also poses as an ornithologist, like the real James Bond, in the scene where Halle Berry comes out of the water.

Bond won the Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica in 1952, the Brewster Medal from the American Ornithologists Union in 1954, and the Leidy Medal from the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1975.

He died at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia at the age of 89.