Richard Owen
(July 20, 1804 – December 18, 1892)
Early life
Richard Owen was born in Lancaster in 1804 of a French mother (Catherine) and an English industrialist father (Richard), who died when Owen was only five years old. We can only speculate on the effect of this on the young Richard Owen, but it is clear that as a child he was more than a little unruly. His schoolmaster called him ‘lazy and impudent’, and said that he would ‘come to a bad end’.
After schooling, Owen was apprenticed to a local surgeon, Leonard Dickson, where he learnt a love for anatomy. His fascination was so strong, indeed, that he stole the head of one of the dead prisoners at the local gaol, in order to investigate ‘facial angles’, ‘prognathic jaws’ and ‘the peculiar whiteness of osseous tissue’. Perhaps this was an early indication of Owen’s unwillingness to let anything stand in the way of his own scientific gain.
Later, Richard Owen was enrolled in Edinburgh University- at the time a burgeoning home of enlightenment- to study Medicine. Here he learnt of the huge importance of anatomical analysis in interpreting why, how and from whence humans came to be, influenced by the Georges Cuvier and infuriated by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The works of John Hunter particularly enthralled the young Owen, who consequently formed the ‘Hunterian Society’ to discuss the anatomist’s ideas. Richard Owen saw the study of anatomy as a way of revealing God’s works, and to the end argued for creationism.
Six months later, his tutor was so impressed that he advised Owen to take up a career as a surgeon in London and abandon his degree. He was glowingly referred to John Abernethy at the Royal College of Surgeons, and was offered a post as a lecturing assistant. At this time, the leaders of the Royal College were coming under steadily increasing pressure from the wider scientific community, largely over their inability to complete the cataloguing of John Hunter’s anatomical collection (bought for £15,000 in 1799 by the government, and still undocumented twenty-five years later, and largely vandalised by Everard Home). Requiring a new, dedicated and diligent face to knuckle down and give the collection the attention it deserved, the college appointed Richard Owen as assistant curator at the Hunterian Museum in 1826. Owen’s love for both Hunter’s work and the curator’s daughter Caroline Clift no doubt spurred him on as he worked tirelessly. When the revered Georges Cuvier visited the museum from Paris to add to his work on fossil fishes, Richard Owen was lucky enough to be the only fluent French speaker in the college, and as such was able to befriend him. This helped Owen’s career in two ways: firstly, being seen with M. Cuvier increased his gravitas considerably, and secondly, Owen was invited to visit the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
Fossil discoveries
Richard Owen was one of the most prolific scientists of the 19th century. His work in the fields of anatomy, biology, and zoology won him the adulation of the scientific community, while his sometimes over-zealous ambition lost him it.
In the field of palaeontology, Owen was particularly important. In 1831, he produced a paper on the ‘living fossil’ Nautilus pompilus that improved our knowledge of this family. Soon, he turned his attentions to the fossil reptiles that people like Gideon Mantell and Mary Anning were finding, particularly because they were powerful arguments against the early evolutionist school of thought that was flourishing (much to Owen’s irritation) in France. In 1939, he produced a report on the ‘Present state of knowledge of the fossil reptiles of Great Britain’, in which he spoke of Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Though it was more of a summary of current thinking than any new discovery, Owen’s use of his material to discredit Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s progressionist ideas won him much support. He was swiftly commissioned to produce a second report. In this, he presented his studies of Iguanodon physiology (stating that its bones were similar to modern herbivorous mammals, and slighting Gideon Mantell’s previous interpretations of the reptile), and proposed division of fossil reptiles into four groups: Crocodilians, Enaliosaurs (including Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs), Pterodactyls and Lacertians. Later redrafting of his report included his renaming of the ‘Lacertians’ as Dinosaurs. While his report neglected to mention Iguanodon’s forelimbs being more slight than its hindlimbs, and also failed to include other fossil reptiles like Thecodontosaurus in his classifications, the work won Owen considerable praise. Soon Richard Owen was gaining a reputation as the ‘English Cuvier’, and moving in Royal circles.
A prediction of his of the previous existence of large flightless birds in New Zealand (on the basis of a single bone) was proven true as more Dinornis bones were found in 1843. Much of Owen’s work centered around ‘homology’, and comparison of fossils with modern animals. Owen won the prestigious Royal Medal for his work on Belemnites, though it was widely suspected at the time that much of his work was plagiarised from the work of a Mr. Chaning Pearce. Later, Richard Owen took many illustrations from Mantell’s works for his attempted summary of British fossil reptiles and implied that they were his own (Owen was later forced into apologising).
One of Owen’s most famous contributions to palaeontology was his lifesize reconstruction of dinosaurs for an exhibition at the Crystal Palace, with Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. When the exhibition finally opened on the 10th of June 1854, forty thousand spectators turned up to see Owen’s bizarre antediluvian beasts, kicking of a period of heightened public interest in natural history.
The final stage of Richard Owen’s career was to fulfil one of his lifelong amibition: the construction of a dedicated Natural History Museum in Kensington. In his new position of ‘Superintendent of the Natural History Department’ at the British Museum (a post he was provided with in 1856), he submitted his plans to the treasury in 1859. He lobbied for a ten-acre site in central London, in which all species of higher animal could be displayed, including a ninety-foot whale gallery! It was to be the ‘best and noblest museum in the world’, to showcase God’s creation. Although Owen suffered some opposition from the up-and-coming Thomas Huxley, the Museum was indeed built, and stands today as an icon of British scientific prowess.
Notable works by Owen include:
The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle pt. 1. Fossil Mammalia: by Richard Owen (Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1840).
A History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds (London, 1846).
On the archetype and homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (London, 1848).
A History of British Fossil Reptiles (Cassell & Co, London, 1849-84).
Palæontology, or a systematic summary of Extinct Animals and their geological relations (Edinburgh, 1860).
Monograph of the Fossil Reptilia of the cretaceous and Purbeck Strata (1860).
Memoir on the Megatherium; or, Giant Ground-Sloth of America (London, 1861).
Description of the skeleton of an extinct gigantic Sloth, Mylodon Robustus (London, 1862).
On the extent and aims of a National Museum of Natural History (London, 1862).
Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia of South Africa in the collection of the British Museum (London, 1876).
Researches on the fossil remains of the Extinct Mammals of Australia; with a notice of the extinct Marsupials of England (London, 1877).
Memoirs of the extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand (London, 1879).
See also - Gideon Mantell
Owen's Dinosauria
References and Further Reading
Rudwick, M. J. 1972. The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. MacDonald, London
Cadbury, D. 2000. The Dinosaur Hunters. Fourth Estate, London.
Owen, R. 1894. The Life of Richard Owen, by his grandson, Rev. Richard Owen. London
URLs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Owen
Royal College of Surgeons Database on Owen
http://www.strangescience.net/owen.htm
www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/owen.html
Richard Owen
Richard Owen,
Copyright Natural History Museum