Edward Drinker Cope

Born July 28, 1840, to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope published his first scientific paper at 19 and rejected his father's hopes for gentleman farming in favor of fieldwork with almost no formal training. He spent the 1870s and 1880s prospecting the American West, often with U.S. Geological Survey teams, racing his rival Othniel Charles Marsh in the fossil-finding frenzy that became the Bone Wars. Failed mining ventures in the 1880s drained his finances, forcing him to sell most of his collection. He kept writing - 1,400 papers over his lifetime, though critics questioned the accuracy of work published at such speed. By the time he died on April 12, 1897, he had discovered, described, and named more than a thousand vertebrate species, including hundreds of fishes and dozens of dinosaurs, shaping American paleontology even as it nearly bankrupted him.