Joseph Mellick Leidy (September 9, 1823 – April 30, 1891) was an American paleontologist, parasitologist and anatomist.
Leidy was professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, later becoming a professor of natural history at Swarthmore College and the director of scientific and educational programs at the Wagner Free Institute of Science. His book Extinct Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska (1869) contained many species not previously described and many previously unknown on the North American continent. At the time, scientific investigation was largely the province of wealthy amateurs.
The Leidy Glacier in northwest Greenland was named by Robert Peary after him.[Robert Neff Keely, Gwilym George Davis, In Arctic Seas: the Voyage of the Kite with the Peary Expedition, 2011 p. 373]
Early life and family
Joseph Leidy was born on September 9, 1823, to an established
Philadelphia family of Pennsylvania
Germans. His father, Philip, was a hatter; his mother, Catharine, died during childbirth when he was young. His father then married his wife's first cousin, Christiana Mellick. Leidy also had a brother, Thomas Leidy. With the support of his stepmother and after overcoming the opposition of his father, who wanted him to be a sign painter, Leidy studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with his medical degree in 1844.
He married Anna Harden, a woman who took a serious interest in his work and helped him with it on occasion. Their marriage was childless, and they eventually adopted an orphaned seven-year-old girl,
In 1849, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Paleontology
Leidy named the
holotype specimen of
Hadrosaurus foulkii, which was recovered from the
marl pits of Haddonfield, New Jersey. It was notable for being the first nearly complete
skeleton of a
dinosaur ever recovered. The specimen was originally discovered by William Parker Foulke. Leidy concluded, contrary to the view prevailing at the time, that this dinosaur could adopt a
Bipedalism. He also described the holotype specimens of
Arctodus (
A. pristinus), the
dire wolf (
Aenocyon dirus), and the
American lion (
Panthera atrox), among many others.
Noted American fossil collector and paleontologist E. D. Cope was a student of Leidy's, but the Bone Wars that developed between him and rival paleontologist O. C. Marsh eventually drove Leidy out of western American vertebrate paleontology, a field that Leidy had helped to found. Marsh claimed Leidy contributed to the falling out of the two by showing Cope in the presence of Marsh that Cope had mistakenly placed the head of a fossil Elasmosaurus on the tail, rather than on the neck,
Leidy was an early American supporter of Charles Darwin theory of evolution, and lobbied successfully for Darwin's election to membership in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.[
]
In 1852, Leidy referred Bison antiquus, the North American fossil bison, to the genus Bison, the first to do so. Sometimes called the "ancient bison", it was the most common large herbivore of the North American continent for over 10,000 years, and is a direct ancestor of the living American bison.
In 1855, Leidy published an influential memoir on fossil ground sloths of North America, the first comprehensive study of North American (the group including sloths, armadillos, glyptodonts, and anteaters). The work expanded understanding of the morphology of species known to the time, including details of the skull, and documented the broad geographic range once inhabited by the common species Megalonyx.
Leidy dominated vertebrate paleontology research in Florida during the latter half of the 19th century.[
]
The "Soap Lady"
In 1875, a woman's body was exhumed from a Philadelphia cemetery; her body was encased in
adipocere. Examining her, Leidy originally reported that she had died in the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic, but X-rays taken in 1987 showed that she had buttons on her body that weren't produced until the 1830s. Similarly, the body didn't have teeth, so Leidy thought the woman had died in middle or old age; however, a new set of X-rays in 2007 suggested that the woman had died in her late 20s.
Wagner Free Institute
After William Wagner's death in 1885, the Wagner Free Institute of Science formed a board of trustees to find a new director.
They chose Leidy to lead the institute, and he became president of the institute's faculty and curator of the museum. He held this position while remaining curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences and professor at Penn.
[ One famed expedition to western Florida led by Angelo Heilprin led to the first discovery of a saber-toothed cat in North America.][ Leidy also led a large renovation to the building and dramatically reorganized the collection. The exhibition he designed opened in 1891, and displayed specimens based on taxonomy and systematics.][
]
Other scientific fields
Leidy was also a renowned parasitologist, and determined as early as 1846 that trichinosis was caused by a parasite in undercooked meat. He was also a pioneering protozoologist, publishing Fresh-water Amoeboid of North America in 1879 – a work that is still referenced today.
Leidy collected gems as well as fossils, and donated his important collection of the former to the Smithsonian before he died. At Swarthmore, he also taught a class on mineralogy and geology.
Leidy served as a surgeon to Satterlee Military Hospital in Philadelphia during the American Civil War.[
]
Leidy was elected as the founding president of the Association of American Anatomists in 1888.
Forensic innovator
In 1846, Leidy became the first person to use a microscope to solve a murder mystery.[
]
Death and legacy
Leidy died in his home on April 30, 1891.
Bibliography
His bibliography includes 553 works.[Chapman Henry C. 1891. Memoir of Joseph Leidy, M.D., LL.D. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of America, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 49 pp., pages 31–49.]
Citations
External links
