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| British
anatomist and palaeontologist. He attacked the theory of natural selection
and in 1860 published an anonymous and damaging review of
Charles Darwin's
work. As director of the Natural History Museum, London, he was responsible
for the first public exhibition of dinosaurs. Owen was born in Lancaster and studied medicine at Edinburgh University and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He became professor at the Royal College of Surgeons and 1858-62 at the Royal Institution. In 1856, he was made the first superintendent of the Natural History Departments of the British Museum, and was promoted to director when the collections were moved to South Kensington. Owen published more than 360 monographs on recent and fossil invertebrates and vertebrates, notably the pearly nautilus, the moa and other birds of New Zealand, the dodo from Mauritius, and the Archaeopteryx - his reconstruction of that extinct bird on comparative anatomical principles is regarded as a classic. Other works include History of British Fossil Reptiles 1849-84 and a popular textbook, Palaeontology 1860. |