Joseph Mellick Leidy (1823-1891) was an eminent American palaeontologist, parasitologist, geologist, and comparative anatomist, described by Leonard Warren in his biography, 'Joseph Leidy, the Last man who knew everything', 1998, as the 'the founder of modern American vertebrate paleontology and of parasitology, two very different disciplines'. He was professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and later professor of natural history at Swarthmore College.
Leidy was an early American supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, and successfully lobbied for Darwin's election to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Leidy was also a pioneering protozoologist, between 1874 to 1878 he studied the Rhizopods ‘as they occur in all fresh waters of the country, from the Atlantic border to an altitude of 10,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains’, ‘ he made a careful exploration of the country about Fort Bridger, Uinta Mountains, and the Salt Lake Basin’, resulting in the monumental monograph Fresh-water Rhizopods of North America ,1879. The author notes in the introduction that ‘with the exception of the cost of publishing the present report, the only additional expense to which I put the Survey during my explorations in the West amounted to about $222. Much expense was saved through the liberality of various railroad companies in giving me the privileged of free travel and travel on half-fare’. The work was illustrated with fine colour lithographs of his field drawings, engraved by Messrs. Sinclair & Son, Philadelphia.
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