Richard Owen (1804-92) was, after Darwin, the leading naturalist of nineteenth-century Britain. A distinguished anatomist and paleontologist, he was influential in Victorian scientific reform and in the debate over natural selection. Leader of the nineteenth-century museum movement, he founded London's monumental Natural History Museum, wrote and published copiously, and won every professional honor. This first full-fledged biography of Owen presents the complete range of his scientific and intellectual achievements.
Nicolaas Rupke discusses Owen's epic power struggles with colleagues,...

First published in 1951, Genesis and Geology describes the background of social and theological ideas and the progress of scientific researches which, between them, produced the religious difficulties that afflicted the development of science in early industrial England. The book makes clear that the furor over On the Origin of Species was nothing new: earlier discoveries in science (particularly geology) had presented major challenges, not only to the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, but even more seriously to the traditional idea that Providence controls the...