American Museum of Natural History

Alfred Bickmore 1860 studied with famed Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz after graduating from Dartmouth. But it was a Civil War stint with the army along the Carolina coast duty that allowed him plenty of time for beachcombing that inspired Bickmore's life ambition: to build the largest, grandest museum of natural history in America and to gather much of the collection himself.

By 1867 he had already explored Sumatra and the Amazon and was traveling from Japan to America via Siberia, St. Petersburg, and London. Bickmore secured financing from Theodore Roosevelt (father of the President), J. Pierpont Morgan, and A. G. Phelps Dodge. By 1869 Bickmore's museum had all the needed approvals and a choice address on New York's new Central Park. Personal intervention by "Boss" Tweed gave the project fast-track status. President U.S. Grant and three Cabinet secretaries attended the cornerstone laying in 1874. And Bickmore soon amassed a collection larger than that of all other American natural-history museums combined.

As the museum's first director, Bickmore pioneered the use of the stereopticon the forerunner to the modern overhead projector into his lectures.

Bickmore got into the dino biz a century before the current craze.