Salim Ali

Salim Ali married a distant relative, Tehmina in December 1918. The couple shared a loving relationship and he was left devastated by his wife’s death in 1939. He spent his later years living with his sister and her husband.

He suffered from prostate cancer during his later years and died on 20 June 1987, at the age of 90.

The Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON)—named in his honor—was established at Coimbatore by the Government of India in 1990.

Salim Ali was born into a Sulaimani Bohra Muslim family on 12 November 1896, in Bombay (now Mumbai). He was the ninth and the youngest child of Moizuddin and Zeenat-un-nissa. His father died when Salim was just a year old, and his mother too expired after a couple of years. The orphaned children were then raised by a childless uncle and aunt.

When he was ten years old, Salim shot a strange looking bird with his toy air gun. Unable to identify the bird, he showed it to his uncle Amiruddin who introduced the boy to W. S. Millard, secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). Millard was impressed by the boy’s curiosity and kindled his interest in ornithology by offering to train him.

He went to primary school at Zenana Bible and Medical Mission Girls High School along with his sisters. He later went to St. Xavier's College, Bombay, but his studies suffered as he suffered from chronic headaches. He passed the matriculation exam of the Bombay University with much difficulty in 1913.

He went to Burma to help his family in their wolfram (tungsten) mining works there. There he got ample opportunities to study birds and indulge in his favorite hobby, hunting.

He returned to India in 1917 and proceeded to study commercial law and accountancy at Davar's College of Commerce. However, Father Ethelbert Blatter at St. Xavier's College recognized his true passion and convinced him to study zoology alongside. Thus, he attended morning classes at Davar's College and also attended zoology classes at St. Xavier's College. He was eventually able to complete the course in zoology.

Salim Ali desperately wanted the ornithologist's position which was open at the Zoological Survey of India but could not get it due to the lack of a formal university degree.

In 1926, he was hired as guide lecturer at the newly opened natural history section in the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay. After two years, he took a study leave and went to Germany where he worked under Professor Erwin Stresemann at the Berlin Zoological Museum.

He gained useful experience in Berlin and made acquaintance with many of the major German ornithologists of the time including Bernhard Rensch, Oskar Heinroth and Ernst Mayr. He also gained experience in bird ringing at the Heligoland Bird Observatory.

He returned to India in 1930. By this time the guest lecturer position had been eliminated and Ali moved to Kihim, a coastal village near Bombay, to study birds.

Eventually, he received an opportunity to conduct systematic bird surveys of the princely states that included Hyderabad, Cochin, Travancore, Gwalior, Indore and Bhopal with the sponsorship of the rulers of those states. He was aided in his surveys by Hugh Whistler.

The author of many bird books, one of his most popular ones was ‘The Book of Indian Birds’, which is considered a landmark book on Indian ornithology. The book sparked much interest in the birds of India and was a popular bird-guide in a low-cost edition.

His magnum opus is considered to be the ‘Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan’, which he wrote along with S. Dillon Ripley. The ten volume work took ten years to be completed. The comprehensive work covered the birds of the subcontinent, their appearance, habitat, breeding habits, migration, etc.