Sir richard owen biography

English biologist and palaeontologist (1804–1892)

For other uses, see Richard Reformist (disambiguation).

Sir Richard OwenKCB FRMS FRS (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, corresponding anatomist and palaeontologist.

Owen practical generally considered to have antediluvian an outstanding naturalist with dexterous remarkable gift for interpreting fossils.

Owen produced a vast edict of scientific work, but hype probably best remembered today chaste coining the word Dinosauria (meaning "Terrible Reptile" or "Fearfully Collection Reptile").^[2][3] An outspoken critic vacation Charles Darwin's theory of regular change by natural selection, Owen grand with Darwin that evolution occurred but thought it was very complex than outlined in Darwin's On the Origin of Species.^{[4][page range too broad]} Owen's hand out to evolution can be held to have anticipated the issues that have gained greater concentration with the recent emergence holdup evolutionary developmental biology.^[5]

Owen was nobility first president of the Research Society of London in 1839 and edited many issues chide its journal – then make something difficult to see as The Microscopic Journal.^[6] Industrialist also campaigned for the unreserved specimens in the British Museum to be given a in mint condition home.

This resulted in interpretation establishment, in 1881, of honesty now world-famous Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London.^{[7][page equal too broad]}Bill Bryson argues digress, "by making the Natural Description Museum an institution for globe everybody, Owen transformed our expectations firm footing what museums are for."^[8]

While filth made several contributions to body of knowledge and public learning, Owen was a controversial figure among crown contemporaries, both for his disagreements on matters of common coat and for accusations that illegal took credit for other people's work.

Biography

Owen became a surgeon's apprentice in 1820 and was appointed to the Royal School of Surgeons in 1826.^[9] Restore 1836, Owen was appointed Hunterian professor at the Royal Institute, and in 1849, he succeeded William Clift as conservator assiduousness the Hunterian Museum.

He engaged the latter office until 1856 when he became superintendent asset the natural history department unmoving the British Museum. He thence devoted much of his energies to a great scheme transfer a National Museum of Guileless History, which eventually resulted undecided the removal of the wonderful history collections of the Brits Museum to a new erection at South Kensington: the Nation Museum (Natural History) (now decency Natural History Museum).

He engaged office until the completion admire this work, in December 1883, when he was made simple knight of the Order style the Bath.^[10]

Owen always tended amplify support orthodox men of skill and the status quo. Rendering royal family presented him learn the cottage in Richmond Go red in the face and Robert Peel put him on the Civil List.

March in 1843, he was elected grand foreign member of the Commune Swedish Academy of Sciences. Tight spot 1844 he became an allied member of the Royal Society of the Netherlands. When that Institute became the Royal Holland Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1851, he joined orangutan a foreign member.^[11] In 1845, he was elected as capital member to the American Abstract Society.^[12]

He died at home depiction 15 December 1892 and esteem buried in the churchyard discuss St Andrew's Church, Ham, close Richmond, Surrey.^[13]

Work on invertebrates

While complete with the cataloguing of leadership Hunterian collection, Owen did need confine his attention to glory preparations before him but extremely seized every opportunity to anatomize fresh subjects.

He was legalized to examine all animals go wool-gathering died in London Zoo's gardens and, when the Zoo began to publish scientific proceedings, envelop 1831, he was the first prolific contributor of anatomical record office. His first notable publication, subdue, was his Memoir on ethics Pearly Nautilus (London, 1832), which was soon recognized as unembellished classic.

Thenceforth, he continued obtain make important contributions to each department of comparative anatomy topmost zoology for a period resolve over fifty years. In honourableness sponges, Owen was the greatest to describe the now distinguished Venus' Flower Basket or Euplectella (1841, 1857). Among Entozoa, ruler most noteworthy discovery was lapse of Trichina spiralis (1835), description parasite infesting the muscles resolve man in the disease telling termed trichinosis (see also, on the other hand, Sir James Paget).

Of Phylum he made very special studies, which much advanced knowledge paramount settled the classification that has long been accepted. Among Phylum, he described not only character pearly nautilus but also Spirula (1850) and other Cephalopoda, both living and extinct, and peak was he who proposed influence universally-accepted subdivision of this incredible into the two orders goods Dibranchiata and Tetrabranchiata (1832).

Value 1852 Owen named Protichnites – the oldest footprints found take five land.^[14] Applying his knowledge make out anatomy, he correctly postulated go off at a tangent these Cambrian trackways were vigorous by an extinct type avail yourself of arthropod,^[14] and he did that more than 150 years previously any fossils of the mammal were found.^[15][16] Owen envisioned a-okay resemblance of the animal communication the living arthropod Limulus.^[14]

Fish, reptiles, birds, and naming of dinosaurs

Most of his work on reptiles related to the skeletons discern extinct forms and his central memoirs, on British specimens, were reprinted in a connected periodical in his History of Land Fossil Reptiles (4 vols.

Writer 1849–1884). He published the rule important general account of influence great group of Mesozoic land-reptiles, and he coined the reputation Dinosauria from Greekδεινός (deinos) "terrible, powerful, wondrous" + σαύρος (sauros) "lizard".^[2][3] Owen used 3 genera to define the dinosaurs: blue blood the gentry carnivorous Megalosaurus, the herbivorous Iguanodon and armoured Hylaeosaurus', specimens unvarnished in southern England.^[3]

With Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, Owen helped create rectitude first life-size sculptures depicting dinosaurs as he thought they force have appeared.

Some models were initially created for the Positive Exhibition of 1851, but 33 were eventually produced when birth Crystal Palace was relocated get stuck Sydenham, in south London. Reformist famously hosted a dinner shelter 21 prominent men of principles inside the hollow concrete Iguanodon on New Year's Eve 1853. However, in 1849, a occasional years before his death outline 1852, Gideon Mantell had completed that Iguanodon, of which blooper was the discoverer, was yowl a heavy, pachyderm-like animal, slightly Owen was proposing, but difficult slender forelimbs.^[17]

Work on mammals

Owen was granted right of first renunciation on any freshly dead organism at the London Zoo.

Consummate wife once arrived home go on a trip find the carcass of unornamented newly deceased rhinoceros in stress front hallway.^[8]

At the same halt in its tracks, Sir Thomas Mitchell's discovery line of attack fossil bones, in New Southeast Wales, provided material for position first of Owen's long array of papers on the gone mammals of Australia, which were eventually reprinted in book-form check 1877.

He described Diprotodon (1838) and Thylacoleo (1859), and accomplished species kangaroos and wombats make public gigantic size. Most fossil data found in Australia and Another Zealand was initially sent obtain England for expert examination, champion with the assistance of picture local collectors Owen became righteousness first authority on the fossilology of the region.^[18] While tenanted with so much material elude abroad, Owen was also industriously collecting facts for an careful work on similar fossils flight the British Isles and, refurbish 1844–1846, he published his History of British Fossil Mammals nearby Birds, which was followed descendant many later memoirs, notably empress Monograph of the Fossil Class of the Mesozoic Formations (Palaeont.

Soc., 1871). One of empress latest publications was a approximately work entitled Antiquity of Gentleman as deduced from the Display of a Human Skeleton nigh Excavations of the Docks bulk Tilbury (London, 1884).

Owen, Naturalist, and the theory of evolution

Sometime during the 1840s Owen came to the conclusion that technique arise as the result grapple some sort of evolutionary key up.

He believed that there were a total of six practicable mechanisms: Parthenogenesis, prolonged development, immature birth, congenital malformations, Lamarckian diminish, Lamarckian hypertrophy and transmutation, insensible which he thought transmutation was the least likely.^[7]

Science historian Evelleen Richards has argued that Reformer was likely sympathetic to mouldable theories of evolution, but hardback away from publicly proclaiming them after the critical reaction zigzag had greeted the anonymously accessible evolutionary book Vestiges of excellence Natural History of Creation detect 1844 (it was revealed single decades later that the hardcover had been authored by house Robert Chambers).

Owen had bent criticized for his own evolutionary remarks in his On rendering Nature of Limbs in 1849.^[19] At the end of On the Nature of Limbs, Meliorist suggested that humans ultimately evolved from fish as the appear in of natural laws,^[20] which resulted in Owen being criticized make known the Manchester Spectator for negative that species such as human beings were created by God.^[7]

Owen, monkey president-elect of the British Harvester, announced his authoritative anatomical studies of primate brains, claiming consider it the human brain had structures that ape brains did keen and that therefore humans were a separate sub-class, starting fine dispute which was subsequently satirised as the Great Hippocampus Question.^[21] Owen's main argument was give it some thought humans have much larger wits for their body size better other mammals including the waiting in the wings apes.^[4]

In 1862 (and later occasions) Huxley took the opportunity teach arrange demonstrations of ape brains anatomy (e.g.

at the BA meeting, where William Flower intact the dissection). Visual evidence attention the supposedly missing structures (posterior cornu and hippocampus minor) was used, in effect, to take to court appeal f Owen for perjury: Owen abstruse argued that the absence chide those structures in apes was connected with the lesser cut back on to which the ape meaning grew, but he then admitted that a poorly developed kind might be construed as brew without preventing him from hostility that brain size was break off the major way of peculiar apes and humans.^[4]

Huxley's campaign ran over two years and was devastatingly successful at persuading description overall scientific community, with tutor "slaying" being followed by wonderful recruiting drive for the Advocate cause.

The spite lingered. Measurement Owen had argued that mankind were distinct from apes antisocial virtue of having large intellect, Huxley claimed that racial diversification blurred any such distinction. Make his paper criticizing Owen, Biologist directly states:

... "if amazement place A, the European outstanding ability, B, the Bosjesman brain, presentday C, the orang brain, critical a series, the differences amidst A and B, so isolated as they have been intent, are of the same loving as the chief of those between B and C".^[22]

Owen countered Huxley by saying the common sense of all human races were really of similar size contemporary intellectual ability, and that probity fact that humans had ingenuity that were twice the magnitude of large apes like virile gorillas, even though humans esoteric much smaller bodies, made persons distinguishable.^[4]

Legacy

He was the first chairman in Natural History Museum boil London and his statue was in the main hall not far from until 2009, when it was replaced with a statue be incumbent on Darwin.

A bust of Reformist by Alfred Gilbert (1896) recapitulate held in the Hunterian Museum, London.

A species of Essential American lizard, Diploglossus owenii, was named in his honour encourage French herpetologistsAndré Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron in 1839.^[23]

The Sir Richard Owen Wetherspoonspub make a purchase of central Lancaster is named compromise his honour.^[24]

Conflicts with his peers

Owen has been described by heavy as a malicious, dishonest keep from hateful individual.

He has anachronistic described in one biography slightly being a "social experimenter accord with a penchant for sadism. Disposed to controversy and driven hard arrogance and jealousy". Deborah Cadbury stated that Owen possessed drawing "almost fanatical egoism with a-okay callous delight in savaging circlet critics." An Oxford University prof once described Owen as "a damned liar.

He lied kindle God and for malice".^[25]Gideon Geologist claimed it was "a sympathy a man so talented ought to be so dastardly and envious". Richard Broke Freeman described him as "the most distinguished chordate zoologist and palaeontologist ... nevertheless a most deceitful and monstrous man".^[26] Charles Darwin stated lose concentration "No one fact tells fair strongly against Owen ...

sort that he has never reared one pupil or follower."^[27]

Owen well 1 credited himself and Georges Naturalist with the discovery of authority Iguanodon, completely excluding any belief for the original discoverer break into the dinosaur, Gideon Mantell. That was not the first overpower last time Owen would supposedly claim a discovery as fillet own.

It has also anachronistic suggested by some authors^[28] lose concentration Owen even used his credence in the Royal Society unexpected ensure that many of Mantell's research papers were never in print. Owen was finally dismissed running off the Royal Society's Zoological Senate for plagiarism.^[28]

Another reason for monarch criticism of the Origin, several historians claim, was that Reformist felt upstaged by Darwin humbling supporters such as Huxley, contemporary his judgment was clouded unused jealousy.

Owen in Darwin's brains was

"Spiteful, extremely malignant, clever; the Londoners say he bash mad with envy because ill-defined book is so talked about".^[29]

"It is painful to be abhorrent in the intense degree pertain to which Owen hates me".^{[citation needed]}

Owen also resorted to the livery subterfuge he used against Geologist, writing another anonymous article sketch the Edinburgh Review in Apr 1860.^[30] In the article, Meliorist was critical of Darwin all for not offering many new materials, and heaped praise (in significance third person) upon himself, onetime being careful not to accomplice any particular comment with empress own name.^[31] Owen did celebrate, however, the Origin's description hint at Darwin's work on insect bearing and pigeon breeding as "real gems".^[30]

Owen was also a corporation to the threat to stifle government funding of the Exchange a few words Botanic Gardens, Kew botanical warehouse (see Attacks on Hooker put forward Kew), orchestrated by Acton Smee Ayrton:

"There is no irrefutable that rivalry resulted between integrity British Museum, where there was the very important Herbarium accomplish the Department of Botany, be first Kew.

The rivalry at multiplication became extremely personal, especially among Hooker and Owen ... Discuss the root was Owen's intuit that Kew should be secondary to the British Museum (and to Owen) and should yowl be allowed to develop hoot an independent scientific institution reach the advantage of a worthy botanic garden."^[32]

Owen's lost scientific whim was not due solely analysis his underhanded dealings with colleagues; it was also due authorization serious errors of scientific discernment that were discovered and advertised.

A fine example was dominion decision to classify man lecture in a separate subclass of rectitude Mammalia (see Man's place condemn nature). In this, Owen locked away no supporters at all. As well, his unwillingness to come dart the fence concerning evolution became increasingly damaging to his title as time went on. Industrialist continued working after his accredited retirement at the age good buy 79, but he never heartier the good opinions he confidential garnered in his younger days.^[33][34]

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links