Harold Jefferson Coolidge, a leader in international conservation and primatology and the great-great-great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, died last week at Beverly Hospital. He was 81.
Mr. Coolidge was the first American to be awarded the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, and when it was awarded in 1980, President Jimmy Carter wrote in a letter to Coolidge:
”You exemplify the American tradition of seeing a need and organizing the means to respond to it. You gave very early warning of the plight of endangered species when few could even comprehend this concept.”
In 1983, the Coolidge Center for Environmental Leadership in Cambridge, Mass., was founded in his honor.
Mr. Coolidge`s interest in primatology was sparked when, as a senior at Harvard College, he participated in a medical expedition across Africa in 1926-27.
