Richard Harlan, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Richard Harlan

American zoologist

Date of Birth: 19-Sep-1796

Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Date of Death: 30-Sep-1843

Profession: naturalist, physician, physicist, zoologist, paleontologist, botanist, herpetologist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Richard Harlan (September 19, 1796 – September 30, 1843) was an American naturalist, zoologist, herpetologist, physicist, and paleontologist.
He was the author of Fauna Americana, published in 1825, and American Herpetology.Harlan was born in Philadelphia, to Joshua Harlan, a wealthy Quaker merchant, and his wife Sarah, one of their ten children.
He was three years older than his brother Josiah Harlan, who would become the first American to visit Afghanistan and who was the presumed inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's story The Man Who Would Be King.
He graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania taking time off during his studies to spend a year at sea as a ship's surgeon for the British East India Company.
In 1821 he was elected professor of comparative anatomy in the Philadelphia museum.
One of his passions was the collection and study of human skulls.
At its peak, his collection contained 275 skulls, the largest such collection in America.
He died of apoplexy in New Orleans, Louisiana.In 1834, Harlan described and named Basilosaurus ("king lizard"), a genus of early whale, erroneously assuming he had found a Plesiosaurus-like dinosaur.

United States National Library of Medicine

	Parent institution	National Institutes of Health
	Location	Bethesda, United States of America
	Coordinates	38° 59' 42.36? N, 77° 05' 57.48? W
	Established	1836
	Web page	www.nlm.nih.gov
	Authority control	: Q611833 VIAF: 139054940 ISNI: 0000 0004 0507 7840 LCCN: n80044831 NLA: 35569840 GND: 1006047-9 WorldCat