Richard Owen

Brilliant, hard-working, immensely productive and influential, the naturalist Richard Owen was a great promoter of science, and played a large role in shaping London�_Ts Natural History Museum. An often difficult and arrogant individual, he was accused of plagiarism and bullying, and is the only man whom Charles Darwin claimed to hate. Although strongly opposed to Darwin and Thomas Huxley�_Ts theories of evolution through natural selection, there is evidence that a few of Owen�_Ts ideas were not so very distant from theirs. This biography gives an account of Owen�_Ts life and work, providing possible psychological and social reasons for some of his more controversial characteristics, and his sometimes rather strained relations with his scientific contemporaries.