• Title
  Letter from Richard Owen to Francois Arago, on the taxonomy of the platypus, 1834
• Creator
  F. (François) Arago, 1786-1853
• Call number
  MLMSS 8750
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  1834
• Type of material
  Textual Records
• Reference code
  997863
• Physical Description
  0.01 meters of textual material (1 folder)
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  Richard Owen was born in Lancaster in 1804 and became Britain's leading comparative anatomist of the 19th Century. He had a keen interest in Australian natural history. In 1827 he became the Assistant Conservator at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and eventually became the Hunterian Professor in 1836. In 1856 he was appointed Superintendent of the Natural History Department of the British Museum. He was a devout Christian and an opponent of Darwin's theory of natural selection, which he argued was too simple an explanation of the evolutionary process. He died in 1892.
  
  Sources:
  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Scope and Content
  Richard Owen's letter to Francois Arago, Secretaire Perpetuel de l'Institut Academie des Science, refers to his findings about the platypus described in a recent paper he had published in the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society (Part II, 1834, p. 563). Owen's conclusions support his view that the platypus was a true mammal.
• Copying Conditions
  Copyright status:: In copyright
  Research & study copies allowed: Author has been deceased for more than 50 years
  Rights and Restrictions Information:: No publication without prior written approval of copyright holder
• Creator/Author/Artist
  Owen, Richard, 1804-1892
  
• Name
  Academie des sciences (France)
  Royal College of Surgeons of England
  
• Subject
  Platypus.
  Mammals--Australia.
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE20834674

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