Richard Owen

Patrick Armstrong

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781789147629
• eBook ISBN: 9781789148237
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies

Brilliant, hard-working, immensely productive and influential, the naturalist Richard Owen was a great promoter of science, and played a large role in shaping London's Natural History Museum. An often difficult and arrogant individual, he was accused of plagiarism and bullying, and is the only man whom Charles Darwin claimed to hate. Although strongly opposed to Darwin and Thomas Huxley's theories of evolution through natural selection, there is evidence that a few of Owen's ideas were not so very distant from theirs. This biography gives an account of Owen's life and work, providing possible psychological and social reasons for his more controversial characteristics and his sometimes rather strained relations with various scientific contemporaries.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Northern Origins: Childhood and Early Life
• 2 Early Days in London: St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the Zoological Society and the Royal College of Surgeons
• 3 Monsters and Curiosities: Extant, Extinct and Non-Existent
• 4 Dr Owen, Dr Mantell and the Dinosaurs
• 5 Darwin and Owen
• 6 Huxley, the Hippocampus and Histrionics
• 7 The Evolution of Owen’s Evolutionary Ideas
• 8 Museums and Committees
• 9 A Cottage in Richmond Park, by Grace and Favour of Her Majesty
• 10 Owen’s Character and Personality
• Chronology
• References
• Further Reading
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements