To the dismay of his father, a physician, Ostrom switched his major to geology, and took a series of extra courses so he could graduate in 1951 and study under Simpson.The American Museum was famed for its displays of dinosaur skeletons and footprints, and had accumulated one of the world's largest collections of dinosaur fossils. The night before the first class he sat down to read George Gaylord Simpson's 1949 textbook The Meaning of Evolution. He found himself enthralled, stayed up all night reading it, and wrote to Simpson saying that the book had changed his outlook on life. Simpson wrote back urging Ostrom to abandon medicine and come study with him in New York, where he held a professorship in zoology at Columbia University and was Curator of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. John Ostrom was a palaeontologist whose careful analyses of dinosaur skeletons revolutionised our understanding of their biology. Gentlemanly and soft-spoken, Ostrom, Professor Emeritus of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, was revered by younger palaeontologists and taught many of today's leading dinosaur specialists. Born in 1928 in New York City and raised in Schenectady, New York, Ostrom initially planned to become a physician, and had nearly completed a premedical programme at Union College in Schenectady when he took a required course on evolution. John Harold Ostrom, palaeontologist: born New York 18 February 1928; Assistant Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University 1961-66, Associate Professor 1966-71, Professor 1971-92 (Emeritus); Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Yale Peabody Museum 1961-66, Associate Curator 1966-71, Curator 1971-92 (Emeritus); married 1952 Nancy Hartman (died 2003; two daughters); died Litchfield, Connecticut 16 July 2005.
Humanity came naturally to one to whom the humanities were second nature.Nicolas Barker. They found him the same, even if his mane of hair went from dark to white. The Eeyore grunt of sympathy if things were not as they should be, the delighted chuckle when they were, were worth coming for, but there was much more: facts unknown, drawn from his vast reading, advice on organising work, sympathy and encouragement. He was always glad to see them, even if they interrupted his work. Visitors at home were welcomed by his wife Elayne, who had heard those lectures on "the classical background" at Wellington long ago. Apart from his edition of More, he had to wait for retirement, in 1990, to get his own work out. The rise of "the portrait of the author" became his Gray lectures at Cambridge in 1990, and as Lyell Reader at Oxford (1994) he dealt as vividly with the illustration of Petrarch.
Essays in the Renaisssance and Classical Tradition (1990) was followed by his Panizzi lectures at the British Library, Erasmus, Colet, and More (1991). With Lotte Hellinga he edited The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 1400-1557 (1999).Although he was increasingly lame from arthritis, most days saw Joe Trapp's little car parked outside the Warburg; he never intruded on his successor, but welcomed the many who called to ask for advice and help. The Warburg was surrounded on all sides by the university, now Proteus, now the Hydra. Without being in any way insular, the Warburgers fiercely defended their individuality, and were determined neither to be changed nor swallowed up. It needed all Trapp's patience and diplomacy, suffering long meetings (which he could not bear) in a good cause, overcoming obstacles laid in the path by the acquisitive or disapproving, rallying the very varied troops on his own side, to bring this off But he did it.
