Name:

Henry Fairfield Osborn

Born/Died:

1857-1935

Nationality:

American

Dinosaurs Named:

Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pentaceratops, Ornitholestes, Velociraptor

 

About Henry Fairfield Osborn:

Like many successful scientists, Henry Fairfield Osborn was fortunate in his mentor: the famous paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, who inspired Osborn to make some of the greatest fossil discoveries of the early 20th century. As part of the U.S.

Geological Survey, Osborn dug up such famous dinosaurs as Pentaceratops and Ornitholestes, and (from his position as president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York) was responsible for naming both Tyrannosaurus Rex (which had been discovered by museum employee Barnum Brown) and Velociraptor.

In retrospect, Henry Fairfield Osborn had more of an impact on natural history museums than on paleontology; as one biographer has described him, he was a "first-rate science administrator and a third-rate scientist." During his tenure at the American Museum of Natural History, Osborn spearheaded innovative visual displays designed to attract the general public (witness the dozens of "habitat dioramas" featuring realistic-looking prehistoric animals), and thanks to his efforts the AMNH is today the premier dinosaur destination in the world.

Away from his digs and his museum, though, Osborn had a darker side. Like many affluent, educated Americans of the early 20th century, he was a firm believer in eugenics (the use of selective breeding to weed out "less desirable" races), and he never quite came to terms with the theory of evolution, preferring the semi-mystical doctrine of orthogenetics (the belief that life is driven to increasing complexity by a mysterious force, and not the mechanisms of genetic mutation and natural selection).