Faculty and Staff
Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr.
Email Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr.
Professor of History
Professor Burkhardt specializes in the history of biology, evolution and social thought and social relations of science. His current research focuses on the scientific and social dimensions of animal behavior studies from 1800 to the present, the social and cultural history of zoos, and naturalist voyagers
Selected publications include The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology (Harvard University Press, 1977, 1995); "Ethology, Natural History, the Life Sciences, and the Problem of Place," Journal of the History of Biology, 32 (1999): 489-508; “Naturalists’ practices and Nature’s Empire: Paris and the Platypus, 1815-1833,” Pacific Science, 55 (2001), 327-342; and “A man and his menagerie,” Natural History (February 2001), and Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology (University of Chicago Press, 2005). He is currently writing a book on the early history of the menagerie of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, the first public zoo of the modern era.
Professor Burkhardt received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1972.