1823-1887

American Zoologist and Government Official

Spencer Baird is best known as a skilled biological investigator who shaped government agencies to popularize and advance professional zoological science and who applied much of that knowledge for practical ends.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the son of an attorney, Baird was an 1840 graduate of Dickinson College. After briefly studying medicine in New York, he returned to Dickinson, secured his M.A. degree, and taught natural history and chemistry there for four years.

In 1850 Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the recently formed Smithsonian Institution in Washington, invited Baird, then age 27, to serve as assistant secretary. Baird spent the rest of his life at the Smithsonian. Early in his tenure he created and organized what would become the United States National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History), the first federal government agency concerned with the study...