Paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (pictured here) developed a keen interest in science at a young age. In 1858, when he was still a teenager, he began volunteering at what Philadelphia area institution?

 

Answer: Academy of Natural Sciences 

Edward Drinker Cope was born in Philadelphia in 1840. His parents were wealthy Philadelphia Quakers Alfred and Hannah Edge Cope. He was mostly educated by private tutors, but he attended Westtown School, as well as, in 1860, Dr. Joseph Leidy’s class on comparative anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. Having developed a keen interest in the natural sciences, began volunteering at the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1858. There he cataloged the reptilian collection, which further nurtured his attention towards herpetology.

 

From 1864 to 1867, Cope taught at Haverford College, but he retained very strong ties to the Academy of Natural Sciences for most of his life. From 1863 to 1876 he served as its corresponding secretary. From 1865 to 1873 he worked one of the academy’s curators, and he was a member of its council in 1879. He resigned from the Academy in 1883 due to conflicts that developed between himself and the academy’s managers.

 

Cope died in Philadelphia in April 1897. Just two years prior, he sold his own collection of 10,000 fossils to the American Museum of Natural History. Some of his ethnographic artifacts were scooped up by the University of Pennsylvania. He left a legacy of over a thousand scientific papers and hundreds of newly-named species.