Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. (August 8, 1857 – November 6, 1935) was an American paleontologist, geologist and eugenics advocate. He was professor of anatomy at Columbia University, president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years and a cofounder of the American Eugenics Society.
Among his significant contributions include naming the dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, his widely used system of names for dental cusps and other features of mammalian teeth, as well as his research on fossil proboscideans (elephants and their extinct relatives).
Osborn was one of the most well known scientists in the United States during his own lifetime, "second only to Albert Einstein", and was a prominent public advocate for the existence of evolution. Active during the eclipse of Darwinism, Osborn was a prominent opponent of natural selection as a mechanism of evolution, favouring the now discredited orthogenesis theory of which he was one of the most prominent advocates.
In addition to being an advocate of eugenics, he was a Nordicist, viewing the white race as superior, and supported immigration controls. Osborn's political connections allowed him to gain significant funding for the American Museum of Natural History, using this to redesign and expand the museums exhibits, which he used to reflect his own views on "racialism, eugenics, and immigration".
Early life and education
Family Henry Fairfield Osborn was born in Fairfield, Connecticut on August 8, 1857, in a family of distinction. He was the eldest son of shipping magnate and railroad tycoon William Henry Osborn and Virginia Reed (née Sturges) Osborn.
His maternal grandparents were Jonathan Sturges, a prominent New York businessman and arts patron who was a direct descendant of Jonathan Sturges, a U.S. Representative from Connecticut, and Mary Pemberton Cady, a direct descendant of prominent educator Ebenezer Pemberton. His maternal aunt, Amelia Sturges, was the first wife of J. P. Morgan, but died of tuberculosis soon after their wedding.
His younger brother was William Church Osborn, who served as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and married philanthropist and social reformer Alice Clinton Hoadley Dodge, a daughter of William E. Dodge Jr.
Education From 1873 to 1877, Osborn studied at Princeton University, obtaining a B.A. in geology and archaeology, where he was mentored by paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Two years later, Osborn took a special course of study in anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and Bellevue Medical School of New York under Dr. William H. Welch, and subsequently studied embryology and comparative anatomy under Thomas Huxley at London, as well as Francis Maitland Balfour at Cambridge University, England."Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935)", Hervey W. Shimer, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 72, No. 10, May 1938, pp. 377–379.
In 1880, Osborn obtained a doctorate in paleontology from Princeton, becoming a lecturer in biology and professor of comparative anatomy from the same university between 1883 and 1890.
Career
In 1891, Osborn was hired by Columbia University as a professor of zoology; simultaneously, he accepted a position at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, where he served as the curator of a newly formed Department of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Fossil hunting As a curator, he assembled a remarkable team of fossil hunters and preparators, including William King Gregory, Roy Chapman Andrews, Barnum Brown, and Charles R. Knight. Long a member of the US Geological Survey, Osborn became its senior vertebrate paleontologist in 1924. He led many fossil-hunting expeditions into the American Southwest, starting with his first to Colorado and Wyoming in 1877. Osborn conducted research on Tyrannosaurus brains by cutting open fossilized braincases with a diamond saw."Introduction," in Larsson (2001). p. 20. (Modern researchers use computed tomography scans and 3D reconstruction software to visualize the interior of dinosaur endocrania without damaging valuable specimens.)"Abstract," in Larsson (2001). p. 19.
On November 23, 1897, he was elected member of the Boone and Crockett Club, a wildlife conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell. Thanks to his considerable family wealth and personal connections, he succeeded Morris K. Jesup as the president of the AMNH's Board of Trustees in 1908, serving until 1933, during which time he accumulated one of the finest fossil collections in the world.Biographical Memoir of Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1857–1935 by William K. Gregory
Additionally, Osborn served as president of the New York Zoological Society from 1909 to 1925.
He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1886. He accumulated a number of prizes for his work in paleontology. In 1901, Osborn was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He described and named Ornitholestes in 1903, Tyrannosaurus rex and Albertosaurus in 1905, Pentaceratops in 1923, and Velociraptor in 1924.
In 1929 Osborn was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
American Museum of Natural History His legacy at the American Museum has proved more enduring than his scientific reputation. Edward J. Larson described Osborn as "a first-rate science administrator and a third-rate scientist." Indeed, Osborn's greatest contributions to science ultimately lay in his efforts to popularize it through visual means. At his urging, staff members at the American Museum of Natural History invested new energy in display, and the museum became one of the pre-eminent sites for exhibition in the early twentieth century as a result. The murals, habitat dioramas, and dinosaur mounts executed during his tenure at the museum attracted millions of visitors, and inspired other museums to imitate his innovations.On the American Museum's habitat dioramas, see http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dioramas/; Karen Wonders. Habitat Dioramas, (Figura Nova Series 25: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis, 1993). But his decision to invest heavily in exhibition also alienated certain members of the scientific community and angered curators hoping to spend more time on their own research.Victoria Cain, "The Art of Authority: Exhibits, Exhibit Makers and the Contest for Scientific Status at the American Museum of Natural History, 1920–1940." Science in Context 24, no. 2 (2011). Additionally, his efforts to imbue the museum's exhibits and educational programs with his own racist and eugenist beliefs disturbed many of his contemporaries and have marred his legacy.Donna Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy," Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. (New York: Routledge, 1989). Also see Constance Clark, God – or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age. (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) and Victoria Cain, "The Direct Medium of the Vision": Visual Education, Virtual Witnessing and the Prehistoric Past at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890–1923." Journal of Visual Culture vol. 10, no. 3 (2010).
Research Osborn was a supporter of the "tritubercular theory" of the evolution of mammalian teeth, originally proposed by Edward Drinker Cope based on fossil tooth morphology, and a rival to the "concrescence theory" proposed by German dentist and physician Carl Röse based on analysis of the development of modern mammal teeth. The tritubercular theory held that the multicusped molar teeth of mammals evolved from single cusped teeth like those found in reptiles, and that a three-cusped (tritubercular) pattern is the ancestral organisation of mammalian molars. The tritubercular theory was criticised by Röse and other contemporary scholars for being incogruent with knowledge obtained from analysis of modern tooth development, and was corrected to fix some issues by later scholars. Osborn's system of naming for the cusps and other elements of mammalian teeth has been widely adopted by later scholars.
In 1922, Osborn named Hesperopithecus (also known as "Nebraska Man"), a supposed genus of North American ape from Nebraska, based on an isolated tooth. It later turned out to be a junior synonym of Prosthennops, a peccary (a group closely related to and resembling pigs), to Osborn's considerable embarrassment.
Osborn's research on proboscideans, the group containing elephants and their extinct relatives has been described as a "modern stimulus and driving force for research" on the group. In particular, his posthumous monograph on the group, published in two volumes in 1936 and 1942, has been called a "landmark of evolution and natural history of the Proboscidea". While the monograph has been regarded as being a monumental and significant work, later researchers have criticised Osborn for overestimating the number of proboscidean species.Davies, Paul; (2002) The straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in Pleistocene Europe. p. 39 Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Advait M. Jukar has described Osborn as a "controversial figure in proboscidean paleontology—particularly for his taxonomic decisions, classification schemes, and ideas of evolutionary mechanisms" but that "his contribution to the study of fossil proboscideans cannot be overlooked", citing his ultimately correct 1900 hypothesis that the group originated in Africa. His work on North American mammoth taxonomy has been described as introducing considerable taxonomic confusion for arbitrarily naming a neotype specimen for the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) without adequate justification, as well as introducing several mammoth species that are now regarded as synonymous with the Columbian mammoth. Osborn largely failed to take into account the effect of tooth wear on the shape of mammoth teeth, which was a partial cause of the confusion.
Osborn was involved in organising the American Museum of Natural History's "Central Asiatic Expeditions" to Eastern Asia in the 1920s headed by Roy Chapman Andrews, with a major goal being to find proof for the "Out of Asia" theory of mankind's origins that Osborn advocated. Osborn described a number of species based on remains found during the expeditions, such as Andrewsarchus (named after Andrews) as well as several now invalid species of Paraceratherium.
He was a member of the American Association for Anatomy.
Public outreach Osborn was one of the most well known scientists in the United States during his own lifetime, "second only to Albert Einstein", and was the author of a number of books aimed at popular audiences. During the 1920s, Osborn became an outspoken public advocate of evolution against religious critics. During the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial regarding the teaching of human evolution, Osborn wrote a book The Earth Speaks to Bryan responding to the lawyer William Jennings Bryan, a critic of evolution and prosecutor on the case (who Osborn had debated in writing for several years prior to the trial), a compilation of speeches defending evolution and suggesting that evolution and religion were compatible.
Theories Dawn Man Theory