[1] His advisor was Lee R. Dice He began to work at the University of Michigan's Laboratory of Vertebrate Biology in 1937.
He studied the home ranges of small mammals, as well as their pelage color which match both dark and light soils in the White Sands, New Mexico.
[4] In 1942, Blair joined the military service in the Air Force Altitude Training and Survival programs during the WWII, returning to Michigan briefly afterwards.
[1][2][3] Blair became a prominent professor as the first director of the university's Brackenridge Field Laboratory and chairman of the budget council for the Marine Science Institute.
Blair's academic life focused on herpetology evolution, but included ecological land classification.