Home > Spencer Fullerton Baird

Baird was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. He graduated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1840, and next year made an ornithological excursion through the mountains of Pennsylvania, walking, says one of his biographers, 400 miles in twenty-one days, and the last day 60 miles. In 1838 he met John James Audubon, and from then on his studies were largely ornithological, Audubon giving him a part of his own collection of birds.

After studying medicine for a time, Baird became professor of natural history in Dickinson College in 1845, assuming also the duties of the chair of chemistry, and giving instruction in physiology and mathematics. This variety of duties in a small college tended to give him that breadth of scientific interest which characterized him through life, and made him perhaps the most representative general man of science in America. For the long period between 1850 and 1878 he was assistant-secretary of the Smithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum complex with most of its facilities in Washington D. It consists of 16 museums, 7 research centers and 142 million items in its collections. A monthly magazine published by the Smithsonian Institution is also named, Washington, and on the death of Joseph HenryJoseph Henry ( December 17 1797 May 13 1878) was an American scientist. While building electromagnets, he discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self- inductance. He also discovered mutual inductance, independently of Faraday, but Faraday was the fi he became secretary. From 1871Events January January 18 The member-states of the North German Confederation unite into a single nation-state known as the German Empire. The King of Prussia is declared the first German Emperor as Wilhelm I of Germany. January 28 France surrenders to en until his death he was U.S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries.

While an officer of the Smithsonian, Baird's duties included the superintendence of the labour of workers in widely different lines. Thus, apart from his assistance to others, his own studies and published writings cover a broad range: iconographyIconography is literally the writing of icons. The term is also used to refer to the reading or study of icons. The word iconography is also used to refer to the archetypical images, scenes and characters used in symbolic representation, such as the Tarot, geologyGeology (from Greek γ&eta ge "the earth") and λογος logos "word", "reason")) is the science and study of the Earth, its composition, structure, physical properties, history, and the processes that shape it. Geolog, mineralogyMineralogy is an earth science that involves the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals. Studies also include the processes of mineral creation and destruction. The International Mineralogical Association is, botanyBotany is the scientific study of plants. As a branch of biology, it is also sometimes referred to as plant science(s or plant biology . Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study the growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, dis, anthropologyAnthropology (from the Greek word ANTHROPOLOGIA consists of the study of humankind (see genus Homo . It is holistic in two senses: it is concerned with all humans at all times, and with all dimensions of humanity. Central to anthropology is the concept of, general zoology, and, in particular, ornithology; while for a series of years he edited an annual volume summarizing progress in all scientific lines of investigation. He gave general superintendence, between 1850 and 1860, to several government expeditions for scientific exploration of the western territories of the United States, preparing for them a manual of Instructions to Collectors.

Of his own publications, the bibliography by G. Brown Goode, from 1843 to the close of 1882, includes 1063 entries, of which 775 were short articles in his Annual Record. His most important volumes, on the whole, were Catalog of North American Reptiles ( 1853, with Charles Frédéric Girard), Birds, in the series of reports of explorations and surveys for a railway route from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean (1858), of which Dr Elliott Coues says that it exerted an influence perhaps stronger and more widely felt than that of any of its predecessors, Audubon's and Wilson's not excepted, and marked an epoch in the history of American ornithology ; Mammals of North America: Descriptions based on Collections in the Smithsonian Institution (Philadelphia, 1859); and the monumental work (with Thomas Mayo Brewer and Robert Ridgway) History of North American Birds (Boston, 1875-1884; Land Birds, 3 vols., Water Birds, 2 vols).

He died at the great marine biological laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, an institution which was largely the result of his own efforts, and which has exercised a wide effect upon both scientific and economic ichthyology.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica