Dean, Bashford, 1867-1928

Dean was an alumnus of City College, Class of 1896, and Curator of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art.

Bashford Dean was an ichthyologist, paleontologist and expert on arms and armor. Dean was a trustee of and affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History from 1903 until his death; he was curator and curator emeritus of fishes and reptiles in the AMNH Dept. of Ichthyology and Herpetology, 1903-1914. He had a similar affiliation with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was honorary curator of the Dept. of Arms and Armor.

Dean studied geology and fossil fishes for his doctorate, and retained a strong interest in fish evolution and phylogeny. He held numerous positions during his professional life, including studying oyster culture for the U.S. Fish Commission; director of Biological Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor; and professor of vertebrate zoology at Columbia University, where his classroom drawings of fishes were admired for their rapidity and skillful execution. Dean published Fishes living and fossil, with his own illustrations, in 1895, and the three-volume Bibliography of fishes between 1916 and 1923. He planned the AMNH's Hall of Fishes, which opened on Dec. 4, 1928, two days before his death.