*Post written by James Wethington, library assistant of the University Archives and Special Collections.

Caricature of Sir Richard Owen, n.d. (Illustrator: Unknown)

Born on July 20, 1804, Owen became a world-renowned English paleontologist and anatomist. He became the first individual to classifying dinosaurs as “Dinosauria” in 1842 and strongly opposed Charles Darwin’s the theory of evolution. Later in his career, Owen acknowledged Darwin’s theory but still rejected the theory (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010). Owen received the Copley Award in 1851 because “On account of his important discoveries in comparative anatomy and paleontology, contained in the Philosophical Transactions and numerous other works” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016). He wrote several books over fossils and he served as the superintendent of the National History Museum in London (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010). Under his leadership, he moved to the National History Museum to its current location because of the lack of space for their growing collections in 1881 (“History and Architecture,” n.d.). Owen died on December 18, 1892 in London, England (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010).

This caricature of Sir Richard Owen is located in the “Miscellaneous MSS Materials”.

References

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2010, January 27). Sir Richard Owen. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Owen
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2016, June 21). Copley Medal. Retrieved April 21, 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Copley-Medal

History and architecture. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2017, from http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/history-and-architecture.html