Arlie William Schorger, noted ornithologist and wildlife ecologist, was born on September 6, 1884 in Republic, Ohio. In 1906, he graduated from Wooster College (Wooster, Ohio), and received his M.A. in Chemistry from Ohio State University two years later.
He was employed as an assistant chemist in the U.S. Bureau of Standards and in the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue in Washington, D.C., and, beginning in 1909, as a research chemist in the Forest Products Laboratory of the U.S. Forest Service in Madison, Wisconsin. After receiving his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1916, he became director of chemical research at the C. F. Burgess Laboratories in Madison. From 1931 to 1950, still living in Madison, he was president of the Burgess Cellulose Company of Freeport, Illinois.
Although his education and professional career was in the field of chemistry, Schorger actively pursued a lifelong interest in ornithology and mammalogy, and was recognized as a leading authority on the history of game populations in the Great Lakes region. In 1951 he became Professor of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, was voted emeritus status in 1955, and served until 1959 as a commissioner of the State Department of Conservation.
Schorger was awarded the William Brewster Medal, the nation's highest honor in the field of ornithological literature, for his book, The Passenger Pigeon, Its Natural History and Extinction, published in 1955. Other writings include The Chemistry of Cellulose and Wood (1926), The Wild Turkey, Its History and Domestication (1966), and many papers on ornithology, mammalogy, and the history of wildlife. He also held a number of chemical patents, and was a member of many scientific and honorary societies, including the American Chemical Society, the American Ornithologists Union, the American Society of Mammalogists, and the National Wildlife Society. Schorger was president of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 1942 and 1943, and a director of the National Audubon Society from 1957 to 1959.
He and his wife, Margaret Davison Schorger, who died in 1962, had two sons, William D. and John R. Schorger. A. W. Schorger died on May 26, 1972.
