Henry Fairfield Osborn

This articles is about the geologist; for his son see Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr.

Henry Fairfield Osborn
Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1902
Born	(1857-08-08)8 August 1857 Fairfield, Connecticut
Died	New York City
Alma mater	Princeton University
Known for	geology paleontology eugenics
Children	Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr.
Relatives	William Church Osborn, brother
Awards	Cullum Geographical Medal (1919) Wollaston Medal (1926) Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1929)
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Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. FRS (8 August 1857 – 6 November 1935) was an American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist, and the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years.

Early life and career

Osborn in 1890

Son of the prominent railroad tycoon William Henry Osborn and Virginia Reed Sturges, Henry Fairfield Osborn was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, 1857. He studied at Princeton University (1873–1877), 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 as well as Francis Maitland Balfour at Cambridge University, England. In 1880, Osborn obtained a Sc.D. in paleontology from Princeton, becoming a Lecturer in Biology and Professor of Comparative Anatomy from the same university (1883–1890). 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. As a curator, he assembled a remarkable team of fossil hunters and preparators, including William King Gregory, Roy Chapman Andrews, a possible inspiration for the creation of the fictional archeologist Indiana Jones, and Charles R. Knight, who made murals of dinosaurs in their habitats and sculptures of the living creatures. 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 museum's Board of Trustees in 1908, serving until 1933, during which time he accumulated one of the finest fossil collections in the world. Additionally, Osborn served as President of the New York Zoological Society from 1909 to 1925.

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. 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 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.

Osborn (third from the right) with other officers of the paleontology section of the St Louis Congress

His legacy at the American Museum has proved enduring. Historian Edward J. Larson has 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. 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. Additionally, his efforts to imbue the museum’s exhibits and educational programs with his own eugenist beliefs disturbed many of his contemporaries and have marred his legacy.

Eponyms

An African dwarf crocodile, Osteolaemus osborni, was named in his honor by Karl Patterson Schmidt in 1919.

Theories

Dawn Man Theory

Osborn developed his own evolution theory of man's origins called the "Dawn Man Theory". His theory was founded on the discovery of Piltdown Man (Eanthropus) which was dated to the Late (Upper) Pliocene. Writing before Piltdown was exposed as a hoax, the Eanthropus or "Dawn Man" Osborn maintained sprang from a common ancestor with the ape during the Oligocene period which he believed developed entirely separately during the Miocene (16 million years ago). Therefore, Osborn argued that all apes (Simia) following the pre-Darwinian classification of Linnaeus had evolved entirely parallel to the ancestors of man (homo). Osborn himself wrote:

"We have all borne with the ape and monkey and ape hypothesis long enough are we are glad to welcome this new idea of the aristocracy of man back to a even remote period than the beginning of the stone age."

Members of the Crocker Land Expedition

While believing in common ancestry between man and ape, Osborn denied that this ancestor was ape-like. The common ancestor between man and ape Osborn always maintained was more Human than ape. Writing to Arthur Keith in 1927, he remarked "when our Oligocene ancestor is found it will not be an ape, but it will be surprisingly pro-human". His student William K. Gregory called Osborn's idiosyncratic view on man's origins as a form of "Parallel Evolution" but many creationists misinterpreted Osborn, greatly frustrating him, and believed he was asserting man had never evolved from a lower life form.

Evolutionary views

Osborn was originally a supporter of Edward Drinker Cope's neo-Lamarckism, however, he later abandoned this view. Osborn became a proponent of organic selection, also known as the Baldwin effect.

Osborn was a believer in orthogenesis, he coined the term aristogenesis for his theory. His aristogenesis was based on a "physicochemical approach" to evolution. He believed that aristogenes operate as biomechanisms in the geneplasm of the organism. He also held the view that mutations and natural selection play no creative role in evolution and that aristogenesis was the origin of new novelty.

Major Publications

• From the Greeks to Darwin: An Outline of the Development of the Evolution Idea (1894)
• Evolution of Mammalian Molar Teeth: To and From the Triangular Type (1907)
• The Origin and Evolution of Life (1916)
• Men of the Old Stone Age (1916)
• The Age of Mammals in Europe, Asia and North America (1921)
• Evolution and Religion (1923)
• Man Rises to Parnassus', Critical Epochs in the Pre-History of Man (1927)
• Aristogenesis, the Creative Principle in the Origin of Species (1934)

References

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External links

• Bibliography of the published writings of Henry Fairfield Osborn for the years 1877-1915
• Brief essay on Osborn's racial theories
• Brief biographical sketch
• National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoir of Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935), by William K. Gregory, 1937
• Works by Henry Fairfield Osborn at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Henry Fairfield Osborn at Hathi Trust
• Works by Henry Fairfield Osborn at JSTOR
• Works by Henry Fairfield Osborn at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)