A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
History
A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
American journal of science; Science -- United States -- History
The man who, next to the three pioneers, has attained the highest
reputation in vertebrate paleontologic research, is Henry Fairfield
Osborn. Graduate of Princeton in the same class that produced Scott,
Osborn served for a time as professor of comparative anatomy in that
institution, and in 1891 was called to New York to organize the
department of zoology in Columbia University and that of vertebrate
paleontology in the American Museum of Natural History. He had, early in
his career, gone west in company with Professor Scott, and had collected
material from the Eocene formation of Wyoming, upon which they based
their first joint paper in 1878, Osborn’s first independent production,
a memoir on two genera of Dinocerata, appearing in 1881. A number of
papers followed, on the Mesozoic Mammalia, on Cope’s tritubercular
theory, and on certain apparent evidences for the transmission of
acquired characters. It was, however, with his acceptance of the New
York responsibilities, especially at the American Museum, that Osborn’s
most significant work began. Aided first by Wortman and Earle, later by
W. D. Matthew and others, he has built up the greatest and most complete
collection of fossil vertebrates extant; its value, however, was largely
enhanced through the purchase of the private collection of Professor
Cope, which of course included a large number of types. The American
Museum collection thus contains not only a vast series of representative
specimens from every class and order of vertebrates, secured by purchase
or expedition from nearly all the great localities of the world, but an
exhibition series of skulls and partial and entire skeletons and
restorations which no other institution can hope to equal. Based upon
this wonderful material is a large amount of research, filling many
volumes, published for the greater part in the bulletin and memoirs of
the Museum. This research is not only the product of the staff,
including Walter Granger, Barnum Brown, W. D. Matthew, and W. K.
Gregory, but also of a number of other American and some foreign
paleontologists as well.
Professor Osborn’s own work has been voluminous, his bibliography from
1877 to 1916 containing no fewer than 441 titles, ranging over the
fields of paleontology,—which of course includes the greater
number—geology, correlation and paleogeography, evolutionary principles
exemplified in the Mammalia, man, neurology and embryology, biographies,
and the theory of education.
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