Paul D. Brinkman

Charles Darwin's beagle voyage, fossil vertebrate succession, and "the gradual birth & death of species".

The prevailing view among historians of science holds that Charles Darwin became a convinced transmutationist only in the early spring of 1837, after his Beagle collections had been examined by expert British naturalists. With respect to the fossil vertebrate evidence, some historians believe that Darwin was incapable of seeing or understanding the transmutationist implications of his specimens without the help of Richard Owen. There is ample evidence, however, that he clearly recognized the similarities between several of the fossil vertebrates he collected and some of the extant fauna of South America before he returned to Britain. These comparisons, recorded in his correspondence, his diary and his notebooks during the voyage, were instances of a phenomenon that he later called the “law of the succession of types.” Moreover, on the Beagle, he was following a geological research agenda outlined in the second volume of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which implies that paleontological data alone could provide an insight into the laws which govern the appearance of new species. Since Darwin claims in On the Origin of Species that fossil vertebrate succession was one of the key lines of evidence that led him to question the fixity of species, it seems certain that he was seriously contemplating transmutation during the Beagle voyage. If so, historians of science need to reconsider both the role of Britain’s expert naturalists and the importance of the fossil vertebrate evidence in the development of Darwin’s ideas on transmutation.

Remarking on a blackened eye: Persifor Frazer's blow-by-blow account of a fistfight with his dear friend Edward Drinker Cope.

Edward Drinker Cope, a brilliant and prolific American naturalist, was notoriously combative. His infamous feud with Yale paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, which played out publicly on the front pages of the New York Herald, was one of the worst scandals of nineteenth-century American science. Cope did not fight exclusively with his pen, however. In 1888, for example, he traded blows with his close friend Persifor Frazer over a matter of honor at the entrance of Philadelphias hallowed Philosophical Hall, just as a meeting of the American Philosophical Society was getting under way. A six-page letter, handwritten by Persifor Frazer and housed in the Frazer Family Papers at the University of Pennsylvania, details the circumstances of their quarrel. An annotated transcription of Frazers letter appears here.

The ‘Chicago Idea’: Patronage, Authority, and Scientific Autonomy at the Field Columbian Museum, 1893–97

Abstract The ‘Chicago idea’, as anthropologist William Henry Holmes defined it, was that a businessman was uniquely qualified to conduct the business of a museum. Chicago philanthropists and businessmen embraced this idea when they appointed Frederick J. V. Skiff, a former worlds fair administrator with no scientific training and no museum experience, to be director of the new Field Columbian Museum. Skiffs appointment was somewhat controversial in the scientific community. In 1895, only two years after the museum was first established, the outspoken paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope sharply criticized Skiffs style of management in American Naturalist. By 1897, Skiffs scientific staff was in open rebellion, charging the director with incompetence and worse. The difficulties of Skiffs early tenure as museum director are examined here, with special emphasis on his troubled relationships with the curatorial staff. An examination of the ‘Chicago idea’ — as embodied by Skiff — provides an insight into the tension between wealthy patrons, their hand-picked directors, and curators in Americas Gilded Age museums.

The second Jurassic dinosaur rush and the dawn of dinomania.

During the second Jurassic dinosaur rush museum paleontologists raced to display the worlds first mounted sauropod dinosaur. The American Museum of Natural History triumphed in 1905 when its Brontosaurus debuted before an admiring crowd of wealthy New Yorkers. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago and other institutions were quick to follow with their own sauropod displays. Thereafter, dinomania spread far and wide, and big, showpiece dinosaurs became a museum staple. This brief but intensely competitive period of acquisitiveness fostered important Jurassic dinosaur revisions and crucial innovations in paleontological field and lab techniques.

Beyond the museum's mandate

A behind-the-scenes tour of iconic institutions offers insight into their once and future roles Inside the Lost Museum, by Steven Lubar, gives readers a privileged peek into the storerooms, boardrooms, and curatorial offices of many storied institutions. In doing so, the book offers a scholarly snapshot of the role that museums have played throughout history, as well as the challenges they face today.

Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities

but historical museum studies of the twentieth-century are extremely rare. This volume makes a significant contribution to the field because it provides a history of the Manchester Museum and a series of connections to larger social, political, and scientific movements of the period. Additionally, it focuses on the development of disciplines within the Manchester Museum and provides a number of new ways to understand the development of scientific and educational institutions.