John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904) and Jacob L. Wortman (1856-1926) were two of the most prominent figures in late nineteenth-century American vertebrate paleontology. Working at leading centers for the science, including Yale's Peabody Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, each was responsible for significant discoveries of fossil vertebrates and notable contributions to taxonomy and biostratigraphy. Yet both had itinerant and, by their own admissions, highly frustrating careers. Traditionally their problems have been explained in terms of personality, as a result of their sensitive, volatile temperaments. Yet their careers and difficulties also reflect the structure of American vertebrate paleontology at the time, a discipline centered in museums and under the direction of wealthy, powerful entrepreneurs. Men such as Othniel Charles Marsh and Henry Fairfield Osborn financed and helped to promote work in vertebrate paleontology, but the context within which such work was conducted also limited opportunities for Hatcher, Wortman, and others.
Ronald Rainger, An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn & Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History 1890-1935