Richard Edward MacMillen

Dick, as he was known to many throughout much of adulthood, was born in Upland, California on April 19th, 1932 to Hesper and Ruth MacMillen. After completing Claremont High School in 1950, he enrolled in Pomona College, graduating with a B.A. in Zoology in 1954. He went on to receive his M.S. from the University of Michigan (1956) and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (1961), both in Zoology. During this time (1953-1975), he was married to Ann (Gray) MacMillen, with whom he had two children, Jennifer and Douglas.

Dick returned to Pomona College in 1960 to begin his career of over three decades in post-secondary education. He was promoted from Instructor to Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Zoology, winning the Wig Distinguished Professor award for excellence in teaching in 1965 and making the first of many research trips to Australia in 1966-67. In 1968, he joined the faculty of the recently founded University of California, Irvine, where he was promoted to Professor and chaired the Department of Population and Environmental Biology (1972-1974) and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (1984-1990). It was there, in 1977, that he met Barbara (Morgan) MacMillen, to whom he was married from 1980 until the end of his life, having one child, Ian, and becoming stepfather to Christopher and Stephen. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1993 but remained active in the field, coordinating and teaching in the University of California’s Multi-Campus Supercourse in Environmental Biology at the White Mountain Research Station throughout the latter half of the 1990s, volunteering with the EPA’s Star Graduate Fellowship Program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Forensics Laboratory in the 2000s, and marking fifty years of publishing in academic journals with his 2010 review in the Journal of Mammology.

Dick was known for his sense of humor and his generosity, along with a good dose of stubbornness. All three served him through his many trials and adventures, from fighting the good fight for (and sometimes against) academic institutions, to scrambling through scrub and hills to find fishing holes, to dealing with old football injuries and neuropathy that troubled his mobility later in life. Much of this took place in the arid regions of the Western United States and, whenever sabbaticals came around, in Australia, where his poor luck at getting trucks stuck in outback mire sometimes earned him the uncoveted sobriquet of “bogger Dick” (plus some friendly joshing and a cold stubby of local brew) from fellow expedition members. Several such escapades, as well as his ultimately successful scientific exploits, are recorded with characteristic wit in Meanderings in the Bush: Natural History Explorations in Outback Australia (with Barbara MacMillen, CSIRO Publishing, 2009). Yet he was often out on such far-flung treks, family in tow, in service not so much of his own research as that of his many colleagues, and of a score of graduate advisees, who at times needed a hopping mouse brought back from Australia’s interior, or help mist netting bluebirds in California. He continued to travel into his 80s, returning to Australia with Barbara to see friends in 2012 and venturing to Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia in 2013; but toward the end, he especially relished time at home and at his and Barbara’s cabin in Idaho, where they spent most summers. It was his wish that his ashes be spread on the mound overlooking that cabin on the East Fork of the Salmon River–the destination of one final meandering.

He is survived, with love, by: Spouse - Barbara Jean (Morgan) MacMillen; Children - Jennifer Kathleen (MacMillen) Brown (grandchildren - Ariel Anne Aulani Brown and Morgan Jose Kealoha Brown), Douglas Michael MacMillen (grandchild - Lukas Jesus Kawena MacMillen), Ian Richard MacMillen (Liliana Vladimirova Milkova, grandchild - Malvina Lora Rousseva-MacMillen); Stepchildren - Christopher Lawrence Burgeson (Dawn Gallo, stepgrandchild - William Mitchell Owen), Stephen Anthony Burgeson (Colleen Burgeson, stepgrandchild - Brian James Burgeson); Sister-in-Law - Marjory (Maloney) MacMillen. He was preceded in death by: Parents - Hesper Nichols MacMillen and Ruth Henrietta (Golder) MacMillen; Brother - Larry Nichols MacMillen.

A memorial page for Richard MacMillen may be found on memories.net