Richard Swann Lull Archives

Richard Swann Lull (b. November 6,1867, d. April 22, 1957).Lull majored in zoology at Rutgers College and received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from there. He worked briefly for the Division of Entomology of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but in 1894 took a position as an assistant (later associate) professor of zoology at the State Agricultural College in Amherst, Massachusetts (now the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), where he decided to change paths from zoology to paleontology. To gain field experience in paleontology, Lull worked as a member of the American Museum of Natural History?s party at Bone Cabin Quarry, Wyoming, in 1899, helping to collect that museum?s brontosaur skeleton. In 1902, he again joined an American Museum crew in the field, this time in Montana. His close association with the American Museum led to his studying under Henry Fairfield Osborn (one of the originators of the vertebrate paleontology collection at Princeton University). In 1903 he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. In 1906, after a short stint at Amherst, Lull accepted a dual appointment as Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology in Yale College, and Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum. He served in one curatorial capacity or another for the next 50 years, continuing on as Curator Emeritus some 20 years after his retirement in 1936. It was during Lull?s term as Director (1922?1936) that the Yale Peabody Museum moved into its present building. Under Lull?s supervision, portions of the Marsh Collection were mounted for display in the Museum.