PopPalaeo Workshop I, Paper 11: Richard Fallon, 'A Good Plan to Build after a Good Model'
Channel: Popularizing Palaeontology
Date: 09/11/2016

This talk looks at the pioneering role of scientific writer Reverend H. N. Hutchinson in popularising modern dinosaur palaeontology in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Through various influential books Hutchinson profoundly shaped the developing literary genre of non-fiction on the subject of extinct animals. London’s Natural History Museum was central to his popularisation work, but Hutchinson's relationship with the palaeontological elite was complex and sometimes fraught, leading to tensions over who had the right to take part in contemporary scientific endeavour.

Richard Fallon is a doctoral researcher based primarily at the University of Leicester, and secondarily at the Natural History Museum, London. His thesis analyses the popularisation of dinosaur palaeontology in Britain and the United States during the period 1877 to 1914, looking at sources which range from the Geological Magazine to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. 

 http://leicester.academia.edu/RichardFallon

Twitter:  @nuovo_riccardo


Paper at workshop "Popularizing Palaeontology: Historical & Current Perspective," held at King's College London, 14-15 September 2016.  For more info go to:  PopPalaeo.com