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Albert S. Bickmore

(1 Mar 1839 - 12 Aug 1914)

American naturalist, traveller and museum curator who conceived the idea of the American Museum of Natural History and devoted himself to establishing it in New York City.

Short biography of Albert S. Bickmore >>

Albert Smith Bickmore

from Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries (1872)

Bickmore, Albert Smith, Ph.d., was born in St. George's, Maine, March 1, 1839. He was educated at New London Academy, New Hampshire, and afterwards at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., graduating in 1860 with high honours. In the autumn of the same year he commenced the study of natural history, under Professor Agassiz at Cambridge, Mass., and in 1861 he was intrusted with the care of the department of Mollusca in the Musenm of Comparative Zoology, under that professor. Mr. Bickmore had very early in his scientific career determined to establish at New York a vast Museum of Natural History. It was partly to make collections for this and partly to supply some deficiencies in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, that after five years of close study he sailed in 1865 for the East Indies. He spent one year making collections of shells and small animals in the East Indian Archipelago; then passing from Singapore to Saigon, Cochin-China, to Hong-Kong, he traversed a large portion of China, visited and explored Japan, traced the history of the Ainos of Yesso, and passing through Manchnrin to the mouth of the Amoor, crossed Siberia, visiting its mines, Central and Northern Russia, and the European countries, and returned to New York in about three years from the date of his departure. He published a volume of his “Travels in the East Indian Archipelago,” in London and New York in 1869, and a German edition at Jena. He was elected Professor of Natural History in Madison University, Hamilton, New York, in 1870, and since his return has been devoting himself to the work of creating and establishing his American Museum of Natural History. He has been also a frequent contributor to the American Journal of Science, and the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.

Text from Thompson Cooper (ed.), Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries (1872), 98. (source)

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1 Mar - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Bickmore's birth.

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