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Darwin Correspondence Project

Richard Owen

1804–92

Comparative anatomist. Assistant conservator of the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1827; Hunterian Professor of comparative anatomy and physiology, 1836–56. Superintendent of the natural history departments, British Museum, 1856–84; prime mover in establishing the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, 1881. President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1858. Described the Beagle fossil mammal specimens. Knighted, 1884. FRS 1834.

Sources

DSB

ODNB.

Bibliography

DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.

ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.

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