Spencer Fullerton Baird

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 of America's animal resources.

Unable for reasons of health and work responsibilities to undertake much active field research on his own, Baird identified a number of junior military officers and young civilians with an affinity for natural history. These workers went out into various parts of the country and brought animal specimens and information back to Washington. Baird arranged to have many of the workers assigned or attached to the Pacific Railway Survey expeditions of the 1850s, which investigated various routes for an intercontinental railroad to the West Coast. Baird supplied his young associates with the necessary instructions, relevant Smithsonian publications, and collecting supplies, but little money, as he was chary about spending the limited funds at his disposal.

By the late 1850s Baird had sufficient specimens and other data on hand to compile volumes on American mammals (volume 8 of the Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 1857) and birds (volume 9 in the same series, 1858). Both were later published in popular editions (Mammals of North America, in 1859 and The Birds of North America in 1860), which summarized what was then known about their subjects. Baird also coauthored A History of North American Birds (3 volumes, 1874) and The Water Birds of North America (2 volumes, 1884). In addition, he contributed to several other volumes concerning the reptile collections brought back by the Railroad Surveys. He continued to find places for younger zoologists on the various geographical and geological surveys of the western territories in the late 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. Most of these men contributed additional specimens to the National Museum's collections, which, with many subsequent additions, are today among the world's most comprehensive.

In 1871, following some years of increasing interest in marine biology, Baird organized—and, to the end of his life, financed out of pocket—the United States Fish Commission. This agency encouraged the conservation and propagation of food fish and research in marine biology while providing support to the commercial fishing industry. It served as the foundation on which most present-day federal fishery efforts are based.

Baird was a pioneer among American biogeographers, who were concerned with the biological and geographic factors that influence the distribution of life on Earth. He was an early exponent of conservation and also worked to make scientific information available to the general public. For example, he edited eight volumes in a series, the Annual Record of Science and Industry, which were commercially published between 1872 and 1879.

When Joseph Henry died in 1878, Baird became the second Secretary of the Smithsonian, serving until his death nine years later. Baird's accomplishments as a builder of several federal scientific agencies, as founder of the National Museum collections, and as mentor of many younger American naturalists were all of considerable importance. In these roles, and as a synthesizer of information, his work was crucial, particularly to the later development of American vertebrate zoology and museum administration.

KEIR B. STERLING