Owen, Richard (1804 - 1892)

Summary

Richard Owen was a British anatomist and palaeontologist who is regarded as one of the most prominent scientific figures of the Victorian era. He initially trained in medicine, and established medical practice in London. For many years he worked at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, giving up his medical practice. Between 1856 and 1881 he was Superintendent of the natural history departments at the British Museum. He was a committed advocate for the establishment of an independent of natural history museum: in 1881 he became the inaugural Director of the British Museum (Natural History). Owen made a significant contributions to the study of fossil animals and is credited with coining the term "dinosaur". He was noted for his work on Australian and New Zealand fossil animals, notably the Diprotodon (specimens of which were discovered in the Wellington Caves, New South Wales, and sent to him by Thomas Mitchell), the Thylacoleo, and the New Zealand giant Moa (Dinornis maximus. Owen's relations with his peers not always cordial: he held strong views on evolution and disputed others' views, particularly those of Darwin.

Details

Chronology

1826

Education - Member, Royal College of Surgeons, London

1827 - 1836

Career position - Assistant Conservator, Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London

1834 - 1892

Award - Fellow, Royal Society, London

1836 - 1856

Career position - Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London

c. 1837

Career event - Medical practice lapsed

1838

Award - Wollaston Medal, Geological Society of London

1839

Career position - President, Microscopical Society of London

1843

Award - Elected Foreign Member, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

1845

Award - Elected Member, American Philosophical Society

1846

Award - Royal Medal, Royal Society, London

1851

Award - Copely Medal, Royal Society, London

1852

Award - Doctor in Civil Law (DCL), University of Oxford

1856 - 1881

Career position - Superintendent, natural history departments, British Museum

1858

Career position - President, British Association for the Advancement of Science

1858

Career event - Appointed Fullerian Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Royal Institution, London

1859

Award - LLD, University of Cambridge

1869

Award - Baly Medal, Royal College of Physicians, London

1878

Award - Clarke Medal, Royal Society of New South Wales

1881 - 1884

Career position - Inaugural Director, British Museum (Natural History)

1884

Career event - Retired

1884

Award - Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB)

1888

Award - Linnean Medal, Linnean Society of London

Related entries

Archival resources

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• Richard Owen - Records, 1880 - 1885, ML MSS 1066; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

Royal Society of Tasmania

• Richard Owen - Records, 1857, Ms 104/2; Royal Society of Tasmania. Details

Published resources

Books

• Cosans, Christopher E., Owen's ape and Darwin's bulldog: beyond Darwinism and Creationism (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2009), 192 pp. Details
• Olsen, Penny, Upside Down World: Early European Impressions of Australia's Curious Animals (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2010), 258 pp. Details
• Owen, R., On the extent and aims of a national museum of natural history (London: Saunders, Otley & Co., 1862), 126 pp. Details
• Owen, Richard, The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy, R.N., during the years 1832 to 1836: edited and superintended by Charles Darwin, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., Sec. G.S. naturalist to the Expedition, part 1: fossil mammalia (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1840), 112 pp. Details
• Owen, Richard, Researches on the fossil remains of the extinct mammals of Australia; with a notice of the extinct marsupials of England, 2 vols (London: J. Erxleben, 1877). Details
• Owen, Richard, The life of Richard Owen, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1894). Details
• Rupke, Nicolaas A., Richard Owen: Victorian naturalist (New Haven, Mass.: London: Yale University Press, 1994), 462 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Finch, M. E., 'The discovery and interpretation of Thylacoleo carniflex (Thylacoleonidae, Marsupialia)' in Carnivorous marsupials, Archer, Michael, ed., vol. 2 (Mosman, N.S.W: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1982), pp. 537-51. Details
• Newland, Elizabeth, 'Dr George Bennett and Sir Richard Owen: a Case Study of the Colonisation of Early Australian Science' in International Science and National Scientific Identity: Australia between Britain and America, R. W. Home and Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, eds (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 1991), pp. 55-74. Details

Journal Articles

• Anon, 'Obituary: Sir Richard Owen, K.C.B.', British medical journal, 1892 (11) (1892), 1411-5. Details
• Branagan, David, 'Richard Owen in the antipodean context: a review', Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 125 (1992), 95-102. Details
• Moyal, Ann Mozley, 'Sir Richard Owen and His Influence on Australian Zoological and Palaeontological Science', Records of the Australian Academy of Science, 3 (2) (1976), 41-56. https://www.publish.csiro.au/hr/HR9760320041. Details
• Owen, R., 'On the discovery of the remains of a mastodontoid pachyderm in Australia', Annals and magazine of natural history, 11 (1843), 7-12. Details
• Owen, R., ' On the fossil mammals of Australia, part I: description of a mutilated skull of a large marsupial carnivore (Thylacoleo carnifex, Owen) from a calcareous conglomerate, eighty miles S.W. of Melbourne, Victoria', Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, 119 (1859), 343-75. Details
• Player, Anne, 'Julian Tenison Woods, Richard Owen and ancient Australia', Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 125 (1992), 107-10. Details
• Richards, Evellen, 'A question of property rights: Richard Owen's evolutionism reassessed', British journal for the history of science, 29 (2) (1987), 128-71. Details
• Warren, W. H., 'Anniversary address', Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 27 (1893), 4. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q151556. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/64089233. Details
• 'Owen, Richard (1804-1892)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-940739. Details

See also

• Minard, Pete, 'Making the "marsupial lion": bunyips, networked colonial knowledge production between 1830-59 and the description of Thylacoleo carnifex', Historical Records of Australian Science, 29 (2) (2018), 91-102. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR18003. Details
• Murphy, Sean, The Cranbourne meteorite (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly publishing, 2023), 164 pp. Details
• Turnbull, Paul, 'Australian museums, Aboriginal skeletal remains, and the imagining of human evolutionary history', Museum & society, 13 (1) (2015), 72-87. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v13i1.318. Pages 75, 81. Details