Barnum Brown was born in 1873. His parents named him after P. T. Barnum, the famous circus founder and show man, to add interest to his ordinary surname. Giving him an unusual first name must have worked for Brown, because he went on to become one of the best known paleontologists.
Brown dropped out of a Ph.D. program at Columbia University in order to pursue his love of field work. Many people said of Brown that he could "sniff out fossils" because of his great good fortune in finding bones. He began work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1897 as an assistant to Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857 to 1935), who was then director of the museum.
In 1902 in Montana, Brown made the fossil discovery that he is most famous for, Tyrannosaurus rex. But Brown did not describe or name the now famous dinosaur (see my article "Brontosaurus versus Apatosaurus" about how scientists name species). That honor was left to Osborn, who named and described the new species of dinosaur in 1905. In his article, Osborn also described another fossil that Brown had discovered in 1900. Although he gave it a different name, paleontologists later decided that both specimens belonged to Tyrannosaurus rex.
Although Brown preferred to do field work, rather than be confined indoors studying his fossils, he still gained a great amount of fame. He was always well-dressed, even while working in the field, and was known for wearing a full-length fur coat while working. He was also a much-requested guest at parties, an accomplished dancer, and apparently quite a hit with the ladies.
In the 1930's and 1940's Brown agreed to write a series of dinosaur booklets for the Sinclair Oil Company, to further connect the company's dinosaur logo with the public. These booklets were given away free to customers, and may have helped the company to get through times when money for gasoline was scarce. In return, Sinclair financed Brown's fossil finding expeditions.
Brown was also famous for his own version of the "Bone Wars." He and the sons of Charles Sternberg often competed for fossils, but it was always in a friendly way, and the rivalry never escalated to the point seen between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh. (See my articles "Edward Drinker Cope" and "Othniel Marsh" for more information about the extreme rivalry between these two paleontologists.)
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