Joseph Leidy

Joseph Leidy (born Sept. 9, 1823, Philadelphia—died April 30, 1891, Philadelphia) was a zoologist, one of the most distinguished and versatile scientists in the United States, who made important contributions to the fields of comparative anatomy, parasitology, and paleontology.

Soon after his appointment as librarian and curator at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences (1846), he became chairman of the Board of Curators (1847–91). The founder of paleontology in the United States, he made extensive studies of fossil deposits in the western states. The first of his many works on the subject, “On the Fossil Horse of America” (1847), showed that the horse had lived and become extinct on the North American continent long before the arrival of Columbus. He subsequently proved the prehistoric presence in the western United States of the lion, tiger, camel, and rhinoceros.

In 1848 he published Researches into the Comparative Anatomy of the Liver, the first thorough study made of that organ. Upon his appointment as professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania (1853–91), he established himself as a leader in parasitology with the publication of A Flora and Fauna Within Living Animals (1853), the first important study of the parasites of the alimentary canal. His discovery of Trichina spiralis in pork led to Rudolf Leuckart’s discovery of the cause of trichinosis in man.

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The chief U.S. authority of his time on protozoa, Leidy published several works on the lower animal orders. One, Fresh Water Rhizopods of North America (1879), became a standard work. In all, he published more than 600 works, among which are the Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy (1861), recognized as a classic American text on the subject, and “On the Extinct Mammalia of Dakota and Nebraska” (1869), described by the prominent U.S. paleontologist Henry Osborn as possibly the most important paleontological work produced in the United States.