Spencer Fullerton Baird

Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823–1887) was an American naturalist and museum builder. As a young man in Pennsylvania he collected birds with John James Audubon's encouragement and taught natural history at Dickinson College. In 1850 he joined the Smithsonian Institution, where he organized the specimens sent back by government surveys of the West into the beginnings of a national museum, and he served as its secretary from 1878. He founded the United States Fish Commission and its laboratory at Woods Hole. His works on North American birds and mammals, including A History of North American Birds, set new standards of description.