Osborn, Henry Fairfield

Osborn, Henry Fairfield

(1857–1935) paleontologist, educator; born in Fairfield, Conn. He taught natural sciences at Princeton (1881–91) and biology at Columbia University (1891–1907). In 1891 he organized the department of mammalian paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. As the museum's president (1908–35), he developed it into the world's largest natural history museum. His bibliography includes more than 600 scientific titles, most notably on reptilian and mammalian evolution; he is credited with originating the term "adaptive radiation."

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Osborn, Henry Fairfield

 

Born Aug. 8, 1857, in Fair-field, Conn., died Nov. 6, 1935, in Garrison, N. Y. American paleontologist. Professor at Princeton University (1882–90) and Columbia University (1891). President of the American Museum of Natural History (from 1908).

Osborn’s principal works dealt with terrestrial vertebrate fossils, predominantly mammals, including Perissodactyla, Brontotheriidae, and Proboscidea, and with the history of the theory of evolution. Osborn developed an eclectic concept of evolution, acknowledging the direct influence of the environment on the organism (Buffon’s factor), inheritance of the results of the use (or nonuse) of organs (Lamarck’s factor), and natural selection (Darwin’s factor). He also believed that autogenetic changes could occur in genetic material.

REFERENCES

Davitashvili, L. Sh. Istoriia evoliutsionnoi paleontologii ot Darvina do nashikh dnei. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.
Istoriia evoliutsionnykh uchenii v biologii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.