Ernst Mayr: Stresemann took to me, and he saw my enthusiasm, and he said, “Would you be interested, in your college vacations, to come here to the museum as a volunteer?” I thought somebody had given me a key to paradise. I said, “Of course I would,” and I did. And he put me to work unpacking new collections that came from expeditions in various places of the world, and I was permitted to identify specimens that hadn’t been yet identified and so forth. I had a wonderful time, and I had opportunity to talk with Stresemann about all sorts of things. And one day he said to me, after I talked about my dreams about the tropics and expeditions and the jungles and all that, he said to me very seriously, “Now look here, young man. If you become a medical doctor you will never have a chance to go to the tropics, you will be far too busy.” When he saw how my face fell, he said, “Well, but there is an alternative. Let me make a proposal. Suppose, after you finish your first half of the medical study… ” — in Germany the preclinical period and the clinical are sharply separated — “…after you’ve finished your preclinical period, why don’t you stop studying medicine, take a degree in zoology, a Ph.D., and when you have that, then I can find a place for you in an expedition somewhere, I’m quite sure.”