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Jane Pierce Davidson (au)
Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897), the grandson of wealthy Philadelphia merchant Thomas Pim Cope, grew up to be a keenly intellectual, energetic, & argumentative naturalist. He was among the last of the great school of late 19th century naturalists who studied almost everything, excelling in the study of reptiles, amphibians, & fish, fossil & modern alike. Cope soared to international prominence among natural scientists. His personal life has heretofore been eclipsed by his monumental achievements in science. Here, Jane Pierce Davidson has critically looked into Cope the man more than any other previous biographer. He loved his wife & daughter, but his amorosity wandered, & hearsay about the cricumstances of his death shadowed him through the 20th century. Cope was acclaimed by international scholarly societies for his scientific work, yet lost most of his fortune in bad mining ventures & remained a complex, fierce-minded man. Relying mostly on primary references, including many heretofore unpublished, Davidson, an admirer of Edward Cope, shows him to have been a very human, personable, self-assured, & brilliant man. |
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