Melville Bell Grosvenor - Accomplishments

Accomplishments

After he became President of the Society and Editor of the National Geographic Magazine in 1957, Melville Grosvenor initiated major changes which are credited with resuscitating the organization and increasing membership from 2.1 million to 5.5 million. He added or promoted new editorial staff including Wilbur Garrett and Joseph Judge, and photographers such as Thomas Nebbia and Bruce Dale.

"Under his editorship, the magazine added full-color photographs to its black-white-yellow cover and installed new presses and equipment to enhance its high-quality color picture spreads," commented Robert McFadden about Melville Grosvenor in The New York Times. "Dr. Grosvenor did not dramatically modify the magazine's traditional tone of gentlemanly detachment from the ugliness, misery and strife in the world."

Grosvenor pushed the Society to create new products including television documentaries, books, globes, and its first Atlas of the World, and published articles on exotic African, Asian and South American locations; wildlife, insects,and other natural splendors and anthropological studies on primitive tribal societies. He also commissioned articles on space, polar and undersea research and other subjects.

Grosvenor sharply increased grants for research and exploration. It gave one of the first grants to Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the oceanographer, and supported Louis S.B. and Mary Leakey, the anthropologists, Jane Goodall, and other modern pioneers. Grosvenor also received He campaigned to save the California redwoods before conservation became a popular cause.

Dr. Grosvenor oversaw construction of the Society's new headquarters in Washington in 1963, dedicated by Pres. Lyndon Johnson.