Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually speciali ...
,
comparative anatomist and
paleontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of foss ...
. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s.
Owen produced a vast array of scientific work, but is probably best remembered today for coining the word ''
Dinosauria'' (meaning "Terrible
Reptile" or "Fearfully Great
Reptile").
An outspoken critic of
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
's theory of
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
by
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
, Owen agreed with Darwin that evolution occurred, but thought it was more complex than outlined in Darwin's ''
On the Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
''.
Owen's approach to evolution can be considered to have anticipated the issues that have gained greater attention with the recent emergence of
evolutionary developmental biology
Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved.
The field grew from 19th-century beginn ...
.
Owen was the first president of the
Microscopical Society of London in 1839 and edited many issues of its journal – then known as ''
The Microscopic Journal''.
Owen also campaigned for the natural specimens in the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...
to be given a new home. This resulted in the establishment, in 1881, of the now world-famous
Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...
in
South Kensington, London.
Bill Bryson argues that, "by making the Natural History Museum an institution for everyone, Owen transformed our expectations of what museums are for".
While he made several contributions to science and public learning, Owen was a controversial figure among his contemporaries, both for his disagreements on matters of common descent, and for accusations that he took credit for other people's work.
Biography
In 1836, Owen was appointed Hunterian professor, in the Royal College of Surgeons and, in 1849, he succeeded Clift as conservator. He held the latter office until 1856, when he became superintendent of the natural history department of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...
. He then devoted much of his energies to a great scheme for a National Museum of Natural History, which eventually resulted in the removal of the natural history collections of the British Museum to a new building at
South Kensington: the British Museum (Natural History) (now the
Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...
). He retained office until the completion of this work, in December 1883, when he was made a knight of the
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved bathing (as a symbol of purification) as ...
.
Owen always tended to support orthodox men of science and the status quo. The royal family presented him with the cottage in Richmond Park and
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Excheque ...
put him on the
Civil List. In 1843, he was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1844 he became an associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. When this Institute became the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...
in 1851, he joined as foreign member. In 1845, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.
He died at home on 15 December 1892 and is buried in the churchyard at
St Andrew's Church
ST, St, or St. may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Stanza, in poetry
* Suicidal Tendencies, an American heavy metal/hardcore punk band
* Star Trek, a science-fiction media franchise
* Summa Theologica, a compendium of Catholic philosophy an ...
,
Ham near
Richmond, Surrey.
Work on invertebrates
While occupied with the cataloguing of the Hunterian collection, Owen did not confine his attention to the preparations before him but also seized every opportunity to dissect fresh subjects. He was allowed to examine all animals that died in
London Zoo's gardens and, when the Zoo began to publish scientific proceedings, in 1831, he was the most prolific contributor of anatomical papers. His first notable publication, however, was his ''Memoir on the Pearly
Nautilus
The nautilus (, ) is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina.
It comprises six living species ...
'' (London, 1832), which was soon recognized as a classic. Thenceforth, he continued to make important contributions to every department of comparative anatomy and
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
for a period of over fifty years. In the sponges, Owen was the first to describe the now well-known
Venus' Flower Basket or ''
Euplectella
''Euplectella'' is a genus of glass sponges which includes the well-known Venus' Flower Basket. Glass sponges have a skeleton made up of silica spicules that can form geometric patterns. These animals are most commonly found on muddy sea bottoms ...
'' (1841, 1857). Among Entozoa, his most noteworthy discovery was that of ''Trichina spiralis'' (1835), the parasite infesting the muscles of man in the disease now termed
trichinosis
Trichinosis, also known as trichinellosis, is a parasitic disease caused by nematodes, roundworms of the ''Trichinella'' type. During the initial infection, invasion of the intestines can result in diarrhea, abdominal pain, and vomiting. Migrat ...
(see also, however,
Sir James Paget). Of
Brachiopod
Brachiopods (), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of trochozoan animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, ...
a he made very special studies, which much advanced knowledge and settled the classification that has long been accepted. Among
Mollusca, he described not only the pearly nautilus but also ''
Spirula
''Spirula spirula'' is a species of deep-water squid-like cephalopod mollusk. It is the only extant member of the genus ''Spirula'', the family Spirulidae, and the order Spirulida. Because of the shape of its internal shell, it is commonly kno ...
'' (1850) and other
Cephalopod
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda ( Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, ...
a, both living and extinct, and it was he who proposed the universally-accepted subdivision of this class into the two orders of Dibranchiata and Tetrabranchiata (1832). In 1852 Owen named ''
Protichnites'' – the oldest footprints found on land.
Applying his knowledge of anatomy, he correctly postulated that these
Cambrian
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ag ...
trackways were made by an extinct type of
arthropod
Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...
,
and he did this more than 150 years before any fossils of the animal were found.
Owen envisioned a resemblance of the animal to the living arthropod ''
Limulus''.
Fish, reptiles, birds, and naming of dinosaurs
Most of his work on
reptiles related to the
skeletons of extinct forms and his chief memoirs, on British specimens, were reprinted in a connected series in his ''History of British Fossil Reptiles'' (4 vols. London 1849–1884). He published the first important general account of the great group of
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Creta ...
land-reptiles, and he coined the name
Dinosauria from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''δεινός'' (''deinos'') "terrible, powerful, wondrous" + ''σαύρος'' (''sauros'') "lizard".
[; see p. 103.]
From p. 103:
"The combination of such characters ... will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria*. (*Gr. ''δεινός'', fearfully great; ''σαύρος'', a lizard. ... )" Owen used 3 genera to define the dinosaurs: the carnivorous ''
Megalosaurus'', the herbivorous ''
Iguanodon'' and armoured ''
Hylaeosaurus, specimens uncovered in southern England.
With
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, Owen helped create the first life-size sculptures depicting dinosaurs as he thought they might have appeared. Some models were initially created for the
Great Exhibition of 1851, but 33 were eventually produced when
the Crystal Palace was relocated to
Sydenham, in South London. Owen famously hosted a dinner for 21 prominent men of science inside the hollow concrete ''
Iguanodon'' on New Year's Eve 1853. However, in 1849, a few years before his death in 1852,
Gideon Mantell had realised that ''Iguanodon'', of which he was the discoverer, was not a heavy,
pachyderm
Pachyderm may refer to:
* Any of the Pachydermata, an obsolete 19th-century taxonomic order of mammals that included elephants, rhinoceroses, tapirs and hippopotami.
* Pachyderm Studios, a recording studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.
* Pachyderma ...
-like animal, as Owen was proposing, but had slender forelimbs
Work on mammals
Owen was granted
right of first refusal on any freshly dead animal at the London Zoo. His wife once arrived home to find the carcass of a newly deceased rhinoceros in her front hallway.
At the same time, Sir
Thomas Mitchell's discovery of fossil bones, in
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
, provided material for the first of Owen's long series of papers on the extinct mammals of Australia, which were eventually reprinted in book-form in 1877. He described ''
Diprotodon'' (1838) and ''
Thylacoleo'' (1859), and extinct species
kangaroo
Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern ...
s and
wombat
Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials that are native to Australia. They are about in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between . All three of the extant species are members of the family Vombatidae. They are ad ...
s of gigantic size. Most fossil material found in Australia and New Zealand was initially sent to England for expert examination, and with the assistance of the local collectors Owen became the first authority on the palaeontology of the region.
While occupied with so much material from abroad, Owen was also busily collecting facts for an exhaustive work on similar fossils from the British Isles and, in 1844–1846, he published his ''History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds'', which was followed by many later memoirs, notably his ''Monograph of the Fossil Mammalia of the Mesozoic Formations'' (Palaeont. Soc., 1871). One of his latest publications was a little work entitled
''Antiquity of Man as deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton during Excavations of the Docks at Tilbury'' (London, 1884).
Owen, Darwin, and the theory of evolution
Sometime during the 1840s Owen came to the conclusion that species arise as the result of some sort of evolutionary process.
[ He believed that there was a total of six possible mechanisms: Parthenogenesis, prolonged development, premature birth, congenital malformations, Lamarckian atrophy, Lamarckian hypertrophy and transmutation,][ of which he thought transmutation was the least likely.][
The historian of science Evelleen Richards has argued that Owen was likely sympathetic to developmental theories of evolution, but backed away from publicly proclaiming them after the critical reaction that had greeted the anonymously published evolutionary book '' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'' in 1844 (it was revealed only decades later that the book had been authored by publisher Robert Chambers). Owen had been criticized for his own evolutionary remarks in his ''Nature of the Limbs'' in 1849.] At the end of ''On the Nature of Limbs''[ Owen suggested that humans ultimately evolved from fish, as the result of natural laws,] which resulted in Owen being criticized in the ''Manchester Spectator
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
'' for denying that species such as humans were created by God.
During the development of Darwin's theory, his investigation of barnacles showed, in 1849, how their segmentation related to other crustaceans, showing how they had diverged from their relatives. To both Darwin and Owen such "homologies" in comparative anatomy were evidence of descent. Owen demonstrated fossil evidence of an evolutionary sequence of horses, as supporting his idea of development from archetypes in "ordained continuous becoming" and, in 1854, gave a British Association talk on the impossibility of bestial apes, such as the recently discovered gorilla
Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four ...
, standing erect and being transmuted into men, but Owen did not rule out the possibility that humans had evolved from other extinct animals by evolutionary mechanisms other than transmutation.
Working-class militants were trumpeting man's monkey origins. To crush these ideas, Owen, as President-elect of the Royal Association, announced his authoritative anatomical studies of primate brains, claiming that the human brain had structures that apes brains did not, and that therefore humans were a separate sub-class, starting a dispute which was subsequently satirised as the Great Hippocampus Question. Owen's main argument was that humans have much larger brains for their body size than other mammals including the great apes.[
During the reaction to Darwin's theory, Huxley's arguments with Owen continued. Owen tried to smear Huxley, by portraying him as an "advocate of man's origins from a transmuted ape" and one of his contributions to the ''Athenaeum'' was titled "Ape-origin of man as tested by the brain".
In 1862 (and later occasions) Huxley took the opportunity to arrange demonstrations of ape brain anatomy (e.g. at the BA meeting, where ]William Flower William Flower may refer to:
*William Flower (officer of arms) (c. 1498–1588), herald, Norroy King of Arms in the reign of Elizabeth I of England
*William Flower (martyr), burnt 1555 during the Marian Persecutions
*William Flower, 1st Baron Castl ...
performed the dissection). Visual evidence of the supposedly missing structures ( posterior cornu and hippocampus minor
The calcar avis, previously known as the hippocampus minor, is an involution of the wall of the lateral ventricle's posterior horn of lateral ventricle, posterior cornu produced by the calcarine fissure.
It is sometimes visible on ultrasonogram an ...
) was used, in effect, to indict Owen for perjury: Owen had argued that the absence of those structures in apes were connected with the lesser size to which the ape brains grew, but he then conceded that a poorly developed version might be construed as present without preventing him from arguing that brain size was still the major way of distinguishing apes and humans.[
Huxley's campaign ran over two years and was devastatingly successful at persuading the overall scientific community, with each "slaying" being followed by a recruiting drive for the Darwinian cause. The spite lingered. While Owen had argued that humans were distinct from apes by virtue of having large brains, Huxley claimed that racial diversity blurred any such distinction. In his paper criticizing Owen, Huxley directly states:
: ... "if we place , the European brain, , the ]Bosjesman
The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, ...
brain, and , the orang brain, in a series, the differences between and , so far as they have been ascertained, are of the same nature as the chief of those between and ".
Owen countered Huxley by saying the brains of all human races were really of similar size and intellectual ability, and that the fact that humans had brains that were twice the size of large apes like male gorillas, even though humans had much smaller bodies, made humans distinguishable.[
]
Legacy
He was the first director in Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...
in London and his statue was in the main hall there until 2009, when it was replaced with a statue of Darwin.
A bust of Owen by Alfred Gilbert (1896) is held in the Hunterian Museum, London.
A species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
of Central American lizard, '' Diploglossus owenii'', was named in his honour by French herpetologists André Marie Constant Duméril
André Marie Constant Duméril (1 January 1774 – 14 August 1860) was a French zoologist. He was professor of anatomy at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle from 1801 to 1812, when he became professor of herpetology and ichthyology. ...
and Gabriel Bibron
Gabriel Bibron (20 October 1805 – 27 March 1848) was a French zoologist and herpetologist. He was born in Paris. The son of an employee of the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, he had a good foundation in natural history and was h ...
in 1839.
The Sir Richard Owen pub in central Lancaster is named in his honour, and there is a blue plaque in his honour at Lancaster Royal Grammar School.
Conflicts with his peers
Owen has been described by some as a malicious, dishonest and hateful individual. He has been described in one biography as being a "social experimenter with a penchant for sadism. Addicted to controversy and driven by arrogance and jealousy". Deborah Cadbury
Deborah Cadbury is a British author, historian and television producer with the BBC. She has won many international awards for her documentaries including an Emmy Award.
Personal life
Cadbury has two sons and lives in London.
Education
Cadbury ...
stated that Owen possessed an "almost fanatical egoism with a callous delight in savaging his critics." An Oxford University professor once described Owen as "a damned liar. He lied for God and for malice". Gideon Mantell claimed it was "a pity a man so talented should be so dastardly and envious". Richard Broke Freeman
Richard Broke Freeman (1 April 1915 – 1 September 1986) was a zoologist, historian of zoology, bibliographer of natural history and book collector. Known professionally as R. B. Freeman, he compiled comprehensive reference works on Charles D ...
described him as "the most distinguished vertebrate zoologist and palaeontologist ... but a most deceitful and odious man". Charles Darwin stated that "No one fact tells so strongly against Owen ... as that he has never reared one pupil or follower."
Owen famously credited himself and Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in na ...
with the discovery of the '' Iguanodon'', completely excluding any credit for the original discoverer of the dinosaur, Gideon Mantell. This was not the first or last time Owen would falsely claim a discovery as his own. It has also been suggested by some authors[ that Owen even used his influence in the ]Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
to ensure that many of Mantell's research papers were never published. Owen was finally dismissed from the Royal Society's Zoological Council for plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and though ...
.
Another reason for his criticism of the ''Origin
Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Comics and manga
* ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002
* ''The Origin'' (Buffy comic), a 1999 ''Buffy the Vampire Sl ...
'', some historians claim, was that Owen felt upstaged by Darwin and supporters such as Huxley, and his judgment was clouded by jealousy. Owen in Darwin's opinion was
: "Spiteful, extremely malignant, clever; the Londoners say he is mad with envy because my book is so talked about".
:"It is painful to be hated in the intense degree with which Owen hates me".
Owen also resorted to the same subterfuge he used against Mantell, writing another anonymous article in the '' Edinburgh Review'' in April 1860.[ In the article, Owen was critical of Darwin for not offering many new observations, and heaped praise (in the third person) upon himself, while being careful not to associate any particular comment with his own name. Owen did praise, however, the '']Origin
Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Comics and manga
* ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002
* ''The Origin'' (Buffy comic), a 1999 ''Buffy the Vampire Sl ...
'''s description of Darwin's work on insect behavior and pigeon breeding as "real gems".
Owen was also a party to the threat to end government funding of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...
botanical collection (see Attacks on Hooker and Kew), orchestrated by Acton Smee Ayrton
Acton Smee Ayrton (5 August 1816 – 30 November 1886) was a British barrister and Liberal Party politician. Considered a radical and champion of the working classes, he served as First Commissioner of Works under William Ewart Gladstone between ...
:
:"There is no doubt that rivalry resulted between the British Museum, where there was the very important Herbarium of the Department of Botany, and Kew. The rivalry at times became extremely personal, especially between Hooker
Hooker may refer to:
People
* Hooker (surname)
Places Antarctica
* Mount Hooker (Antarctica)
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* Cape Hooker (South Shetland Islands)
New Zealand
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* Hoo ...
and Owen ... At the root was Owen’s feeling that Kew should be subordinate to the British Museum (and to Owen) and should not be allowed to develop as an independent scientific institution with the advantage of a great botanic garden."
It has been suggested by some authors that the portrayal of Owen as a vindictive and treacherous man was fostered and encouraged by his rivals (particularly Darwin
Darwin may refer to:
Common meanings
* Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection
* Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...
, Hooker
Hooker may refer to:
People
* Hooker (surname)
Places Antarctica
* Mount Hooker (Antarctica)
* Cape Hooker (Antarctica)
* Cape Hooker (South Shetland Islands)
New Zealand
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* Mount Hooker (New Zealand) in the Southern Alps
* Hoo ...
, and Huxley
Huxley may refer to:
People
* Huxley (surname)
* The British Huxley family
* Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), British biologist known as "Darwin's Bulldog"
* Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), British writer, author of ''Brave New World'', grandson ...
) and may be somewhat undeserved. In the first part of his career he was rightly regarded as one of the great scientific figures of the age. In the second part of his career his reputation fell.
Owen's lost scientific standing was not due solely to his underhanded dealings with colleagues; it was also due to serious errors of scientific judgement that were discovered and publicized. A fine example was his decision to classify man in a separate subclass of the Mammalia (see '' Man's place in nature''). In this Owen had no supporters at all. Also, his unwillingness to come off the fence concerning evolution became increasingly damaging to his reputation as time went on. Owen continued working after his official retirement at the age of 79, but he never recovered the good opinions he had garnered in his younger days.
Bibliography
* ''Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus'' (1832)
* ''Odontography'' (1840–1845)
* ''Description of the Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth'' (1842)
* ''On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton'' (1848)
* ''History of British Fossil Reptiles'' (4 vols., 1849–1884)
* ''On the Nature of Limbs'' (1849)
* ''Palæontology or a Systematic Summary of Extinct Animals and Their Geological Relations'' (1860)
* ''Archaeopteryx'' (1863)
* ''Anatomy of Vertebrates'' (1866) Image from
**Available at Google Books:
Volume I, Fishes and Reptiles
Volume II, Birds and Mammals
Volume III, Mammals
* ''Memoir of the Dodo'' (1866) Full book on Wiki commons
* ''Monograph of the Fossil Mammalia of the Mesozoic Formations'' (1871)
* ''Catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia of South Africa'' (1876)
* ''Antiquity of Man as deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton during Excavations of the Docks at Tilbury'' (1884)
References
Further reading
*
*
* Amundson, Ron, (2007), ''The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought: Roots of Evo-Devo.'' New York: Cambridge University of Press.
*
*
*
*
*Cosans, Christopher, (2009), ''Owen's Ape & Darwin's Bulldog: Beyond Darwinism and Creationism''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
* Desmond, Adrian & Moore, James (1991). ''Darwin''. London: Michael Joseph, the Penguin Group. .
* Darwin, Francis, editor (1887). ''The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter'' (7th Edition). London: John Murray.
*Darwin, Francis & Seward, A. C., editors (1903). ''More letters of Charles Darwin: A record of his work in a series of hitherto unpublished letters''. London: John Murray.
*
*
*
* [Cosans, 2009, pp. 108–111]
*
*
* Richards, Evellen, (1987), "A Question of Property Rights: Richard Owen's Evolutionism Reassessed", ''British Journal for the History of Science'', 20: 129–171.
* Rupke, Nicolaas, (1994), ''Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist.'' New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Shindler, Karolyn. ''Richard Owen: the greatest scientist you've never heard of'', The Telegraph, 16 December 2010
(accessed 16 December 2010)
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Owen, Richard
1804 births
1892 deaths
English anatomists
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Wollaston Medal winners
19th-century British scientists
People who have lived in Richmond Park