Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bickmore, Albert Smith
BICKMORE, Albert Smith, born at St. George's, Maine, March 1, 1839. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1860, and immediately commenced the study of natural history under Agassiz, who, in the following year, placed him in charge of the department of Mollusca in his Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. He had, very early in his scientific career, determined to establish at New York a Museum of Natural History. Partly to make collections for this, and partly to supply some deficiencies in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he sailed in 1865 for the East Indies. He spent one year making collections of shells and small animals in the East Indian Archipelago; then traversed a large portion of China, visited and explored Japan, crossed Siberia, visiting its mines, Central and Northern Russia, and other European countries, and returned to New York in about three years from the date of his departure. In 1869 he published in London and New York a volume of his "Travels in the East Indian Archipelago," and a German edition at Jena. In 1870 he was elected Professor of Natural History in Madison University, Hamilton, New York. He has been a frequent contributor to the American Journal of Science, and the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society; and is now Superintendent of the Museum of Natural History, New York, which was inaugurated at the close of 1877.