Joseph Leidy

Joseph Mellick Leidy (September 9, 1823 – April 30, 1891) was an American physician, paleontologist, parasitologist, microscopist, professor of anatomy, and professor of natural history. He was elected in 1849 to the American Philosophical Society and appointed in 1863 by the U.S. Congress as one of the fifty original members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Leidy was awarded in 1884 the Lyell Medal. Quotes The phenomena which characterize life are as follows: the origin of the organized body from a parent; its successive development and growth; the processes of nutrition and assimilation; the combustion of effete particles of structure; and reproduction. The cessation of these phenomena constitute death. An Elementary treatise on human anatomy J.B. Lippincott 1861 https://books.google.com/books?id=2rWH35EvL3wC&pg=PA22 22 (663 pages) Fort Bridger occupies a situation in the midst of a wide plain at the base of the Uintah Mountains, and at an altitude of nearly seven thousand feet above the ocean-level. The neighboring country, extending from the Uintah and Wasatch Mountains on the south and west to the Wind River Range on the northeast at the close of the Cretaceous epoch, appears to have been occupied by a vast fresh-water lake. Abundance of evidence is found to prove that the region was then inhabited by animals as numerous and varied as those of any other forms, recent or extinct, in other parts of the world. Then, too, a rich tropical vegetation covered the country, in strange contrast to its present almost lifeless and desert condition. Contributions to the Extinct Vertebrate Fauna of the Western Territories Volume 1, Report of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories, U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Government Printing Office 1873 https://books.google.com/books?id=O0U3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA15 15–16 (358 pages) The Rhizopoda (Gr. rhiza, root; pous foot:—root-footed animals) are mostly microscopic beings, rarely just visible to the naked eye; though some are sufficiently large to appear as conspicuous objects. Their minuteness is largely compensated by their multitude and world-wide distribution; essentially aquatic, they occur wherever there is moisture. Commencing from one’s own doorstep, they may be found in almost every damp nook and crevice, savanna and marsh, pool and ditch, pond and lake, sea and ocean, and from the greatest depths of the latter to the Snow line snow-line of mountains. By far the greatest proportion are marine, and their tiny shells enter abundantly into the composition of the ocean mud and abound in the sands of every ocean shore. Fresh-water Rhizopoda of United States U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, vol. 12 U.S. Government Printing Office 1879 1–2 (324 pages; text at archive.org) Quotes about Joseph Leidy The name of Joseph Leidy will endure both as the founder of Vertebrate paleontology vertebrate palaeontology in America and as the last great naturalist of the old, or eighteenth and early nineteenth century type. Among zoologists he was the last to treat of the whole animal world from the protozoa to man, rendering in every branch contributions of permanent value. From his researches among the minerals, plants, infusorians, entozoa, and mollusks, he ranged into comparative anatomy as well as into his greatest field of research, vertebrate palaeontology. In the year 1852 we find him writing upon fossils from the Western United States West, the geology of the Badlands#United States Badlands, the life history of bees, their anatomy and the physiology of their reproductive organs, as well as entering the discussion of some new fungi with an English microscopist, the specific determination of various parasites, as well as numerous plants, the investigation of some new points in comparative anatomy, the observation of the movements of some new Rhizopods. His encyclopaedic knowledge, broad grasp of the whole field of natural history, precision and originality of observation in every field, present a combination of endowments which will never reappear in a single individual. Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1913 Biographical Memoir of Joseph Leidy, 1823-1891 Vol. 7 Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences U.S. National Academy of Sciences https://books.google.com/books?id=las_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA339 339–396 (quote from p. 339) Leidy's knowledge of living forms ranged from protozoa to humans. He may legitimately be called the founder of modern American vertebrate paleontology and of parasitology, two very different disciplines. He was one of the first truly productive American microscopists, using the instrument as an everyday tool in each of the many fields he explored. He was also an author in anthropology, entomology, helminthology, botany, protozoology, zoology, geology, mineralogy, comparative anatomy, histology, and pathology. He even knew some chemistry. Regarded as the foremost human anatomist in America, and widely known for his textbook on the subject, Leidy was throughout almost his entire career professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. But he was also an expert on gems, consulted by jewelers and the Natural History Museum, London British Museum in London. Leonard Warren, Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything Yale University Press 1998 9780300174281 https://books.google.com/books?id=A3KWmEUO_jQC&pg=PA4 4–5 External links Category:1823 births Category:1891 deaths Category:Academics from the United States Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Naturalists from the United States Category:Paleontologists from the United States Category:Physicians from Philadelphia Category:Swarthmore College faculty Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty