Owen's Bicentenntial

Here's a short article from The Taipei Times about a forthcoming celebration of the 200th birthday of Robert Owen. Owen was one of the foremost biologists of the latter half of the nineteenth century, and one of the last credentialed holdouts against evolution.

Britain's leading evolutionary biologists are preparing to celebrate the 200th birthday of one of Charles Darwin's most ferocious opponents.

Richard Owen went to his grave believing Darwin was wrong to argue that life evolved by natural selection operating on random mutation -- but he also discovered the gorilla for science, identified the dodo, coined the word “dinosaur” and founded London's famous Natural History Museum in 1881. A special exhibition and a Richard Owen trail open at the museum today.

A nice, short description on Owen's importance in scientific history is available here. A more detailed description is available here.