160 Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031, United States
At nineteen Dean graduated from the College of the City of New York, where he began his teaching as tutor in natural history.
Gallery of Bashford Dean
1130 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027, United States
Dean attended Columbia College where he won his Master of Arts degree in 1889, and doctorate in 1890, studying American paleozoic fishes under John S. Newberry.
1130 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027, United States
Dean attended Columbia College where he won his Master of Arts degree in 1889, and doctorate in 1890, studying American paleozoic fishes under John S. Newberry.
Bashford Dean was an outstanding American specializing in ichthyology, and at the same time an expert in medieval and modern armor. He was a curator of reptiles and fishes at the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Background
Ethnicity:
Dean's ancestry was Puritan with Dutch and Huguenot strains.
Dean was born on October 28, 1867, in New York City, the son of a wealthy New York lawyer of a Tarry town family, William Dean, and of Emma Basliford of Yonkers.
Education
The major interests of Dean's life - ichthyology and armor - rooted themselves in childhood. At five he was fascinated by a Gothic helmet; he bid in his first piece of ancient arms before he was ten. Prof. Edward Morse, of Salem, introduced him at the age of seven to the charms of fishes. Apparently so diverse, these interests were made to dovetail harmoniously throughout his career.
His education was scientific. At nineteen he graduated from the College of the City of New York, where he began his teaching as tutor in natural history. Meanwhile he attended Columbia College where he won his Master of Arts degree in 1889, and doctorate in 1890, studying American paleozoic fishes under John S. Newberry.
Dean joined the Columbia faculty as instructor in 1891, becoming full professor of vertebrate zoology in 1904, a post which he held until his death.
His summers he devoted to investigating oyster-culture in England, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and later Japan, for the United States Fish Commission.
At twenty-three he was made director of the Biological Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.
He edited Newberry’s memoirs on Devonian fishes and undertook a remarkable series of restorations based on Newberry’s collection which, according to Osborn, established his fame as an ichthyologist.
In search of early developmental stages of hag-fish and sharks he made explorations in Japan, California, and Puget Sound. Between 1891 and 1909 he published a long series of important papers on paleichthyology and the embryology of fishes. “A thorough fusion of zoological and paleontological concepts characterized all his work”.
Always an avid collector and student of ancient arms and armor, Dean seized opportunities offered by his scientific quests to study foreign museum and private collections and to explore remote castles where armor could be studied in its original setting. Pursuit of primitive fish-forms in Oriental waters led to his acquiring a notable collection of Japanese armor.
His interest in both subjects was developmental. A student of Devonian armored-fishes he was, wrote one of his students, “quick to perceive the striking analogies in the evolution of human armor, the study of which “was to him almost a branch of zoology”.
In 1903 he became curator of reptiles and fishes at the American Museum of Natural History. Here during seven years of active service, he planned and directed the installation of the synoptic exhibit of fishes, a series of habitat groups, and the collection of fossil fishes. He outlined plans for a new Hall of Fishes which, after years of disappointment and delay, was dedicated shortly before his death.
In 1906 he began his curatorship of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where, before his retirement in 1927 he had built up a collection ranking easily first in America and perhaps fourth among armor-museums of the world.
Himself a large donor, he secured important gifts and made important discoveries during arduous armor-hunts abroad.
His growing absorption in this work caused him in 1910 to resign his post at the American Museum where he was made honorary curator.
During the World War, as major of ordnance, he used his technical knowledge in designing special helmets and body-armor for trench and aerial warfare. He had considerable skill as an artist, and illustrated his work with minutely finished drawings and lithographic engravings. Of his many publications over two hundred are on fishes, and a hundred or more on ancient and modern armor. The monumental Bibliography of Fishes (3 vols. , 1916 - 23), one of the great enterprises of his life, catalogues details relating to fishes from remote classical times to the present, indexing 50, 000 titles.
A similar bibliography of armor, completed before his death, awaits publication by the Metropolitan Museum. He carried on these multiform activities, together with the organization of his private armor-collection at his home at Riverdale, despite physical handicaps which would have quenched a lesser man. On his retirement from the curatorship of arms and armor in the Metropolitan Museum he was made a trustee of that institution. His death occurred in Battle Creek, Michigan.
“Not a nook or corner of Europe or Asia escaped his search. He even excavated wells in Crusaders’ castles in Palestine. He probably knew the location of every potentially purchasable piece of armor in existence”.
Connections
In 1893, Dean married Mary Alice Dyckman, of an old Manhattan family.