Henry Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn
Photo from 1919
Born	August 8, 1857 Fairfield, Connecticut
Died	November 6, 1935 (1935-11-07) (aged 78)
Alma mater	Princeton University
Known for	geology paleontology eugenics
Children	Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr.
Relatives	William Church Osborn, brother
Awards	Cullum Geographical Medal (1919) Wollaston Medal (1926) Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1929)

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. ForMemRS (August 8, 1857 – November 6, 1935) was an American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist, and the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years.

Son of the prominent railroad tycoon William Henry and Virginia Reed Osborn, Henry Fairfield Osborn was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, 1857. He studied at Princeton University (1873–1877), obtaining a B.A. in geology and archaeology, where he was mentored by paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Two years later, Osborn took a special course of study in anatomy in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and Bellevue Medical School of New York under Dr. William H. Welch, and subsequently studied embryology and comparative anatomy under Thomas Huxley as well as Francis Maitland Balfour at Cambridge University, England. In 1880, Osborn obtained a Sc.D. in paleontology from Princeton, becoming a Lecturer in Biology and Professor of Comparative Anatomy from the same university (1883–1890). In 1891, Osborn was hired by Columbia University as a professor of zoology; simultaneously, he accepted a position at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, where he served as the curator of a newly formed Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. As a curator, he assembled a remarkable team of fossil hunters and preparators, including William King Gregory; Roy Chapman Andrews, a possible inspiration for the creation of the fictional archeologist Indiana Jones; and Charles R. Knight, who made murals of dinosaurs in their habitats and sculptures of the living creatures. On November 23, 1897 he was elected member of the Boone and Crockett Club, a wildlife conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell. Thanks to his considerable family wealth and personal connections, he succeeded Morris K. Jesup as the president of the museum's Board of Trustees in 1908, serving until 1933, during which time he accumulated one of the finest fossil collections in the world. Additionally, Osborn served as President of the New York Zoological Society from 1909 to 1925.