(A grim but absorbing book about a threat greater than the...)
A grim but absorbing book about a threat greater than the atom bomb- the waste of the world's natural resources. With a minimum of statistics, the author hammers home the devastating fact that most of the world's agricultural bank balance is running down at an increasing rate, and that science hasn't been able to reverse the direction. What will do the trick is long-range government planning and control, a remedy unpalatable to rugged individualism, but working out successfully in Russia. The author, president of the New York Zoological Society, has done a solid and scientific job that should make many sit up and take notice.
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr. was an American conservationist and naturalist. He was longtime president of the New York Zoological Society (today known as the Wildlife Conservation Society).
Background
Henry Osborn was born on January 15, 1887, in Princeton, New Jersey, the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn, a biology professor and president of the American Museum of Natural History, and Lucretia Perry. He grew up in a family of considerable wealth and social standing, for his paternal grandfather, William Henry Osborn, had made a fortune in the railroad business, and by marriage the Osborn family had ties to J. Pierpont Morgan and Cleveland Dodge. Drawing upon those powerful social and economic connections, Osborn's father had forged a career as a leading organizer and administrator for science in New York City. Osborn's father's enthusiasm for science had a profound impact on him. As a child, Osborn developed a private collection of animals, and on several occasions he accompanied his father on museum expeditions for fossil vertebrates, trips that took him to dinosaur beds in the western United States and prehistoric elephant deposits in Egypt.
Education
Henry followed his father's footsteps in his formal education: after graduating from the Groton School in 1905, Osborn attended Princeton University for four years, graduating with a B. A. in 1909. He spent the next year studying at Trinity College, Cambridge. His education included several courses in the natural sciences, though he consciously avoided becoming a specialist.
Career
After college Osborn held a number of jobs. He worked first in the freight yards of San Francisco and later as a member of a railroad crew in Nevada. Eventually he returned to New York and married. In order to support his family, Osborn sought a career in business. He became treasurer of the Union Oil Company and from 1914 to 1917 served as treasurer of a business that manufactured labels. After serving as a captain in the army during World War I, he became a partner in Redmond and Company, a New York investment banking firm. In 1935 he joined the banking firm of Maynard, Oakland, and Lawrence, but he quit the same year and retired from a business world that he now considered artificial.
Osborn's retirement from business enabled him to devote all his time and energy to his passion for animals. Since 1923 he had served as a trustee and member of the executive board of the New York Zoological Society, and in 1935 he became the secretary and in 1940 the president of the organization. In those positions Osborn made his most important contributions to science and society. As president of the Zoological Society, Osborn had responsibility for the Bronx Zoo, and during his twenty-eight years in office, he instituted a number of changes. Interested in exhibiting animals in their natural habitat, Osborn played a central role in developing the African Plains exhibit, a bird house that allowed tropical birds to fly freely in native surroundings, and new buildings for penguins, apes, and nocturnal animals. Osborn's efforts were not revolutionary, but under his direction the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium developed new facilities for animals and viewers, thereby promoting better opportunities for public education and scientific research.
Osborn's work in conservation broadened the interests of the Zoological Society and made his reputation. In a 1945 editorial in the zoo's bulletin, Animal Kingdom, he warned of a depletion of forests, soils, and water resources that would threaten human existence. He further developed that argument in Our Plundered Planet (1948) and The Limits of the Earth (1953). The former described how humans had misused the land and called for the conservation of natural resources to ensure the continuation of civilization. The latter defined the explosive increase in world population and its impact on food, water, and other natural resources. Both books were nontechnical expositions, and their popularity established Osborn as a leading advocate for conservation and intelligent use of the earth's resources.
Within the Zoological Society, Osborn and others soon established the Conservation Foundation, an organization that produced books, films, and special studies on water resources, flood control, and endangered species. He and Laurance Rockefeller, a vice-president of the Zoological Society, helped to create the Jackson Hole Wildlife Park at Moran, Wyoming, a preserve where naturalists could investigate the biology of the Rocky Mountains. Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, Osborn lectured on conservation and wrote articles on the impending ecological crisis for Science, the Atlantic Monthly, and other periodicals. From 1950 to 1957 he served on the Conservation Advisory Committee of the United States Department of the Interior and on the Planning Committee of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
Henry Osborn died in New York City. Not a scientist himself, Osborn popularized the concerns of scientists and helped to mobilize public and government support for a nascent ecology movement that a decade later became a major scientific and public-policy issue.
Henry Osborn was a founding member of the Conservation Foundationa; a member of the Conservation Advisory Committee for the U. S. Department of the Interior and a member of the Planning Committee of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
Connections
On September 8, 1914, Henry Osborn married Marjorie M. Lamont; they had three children.