JAMES ARTHUR 
1842-1930 
Born in Ireland and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland, James 
Arthur came to New York in 1871. Trained in mechanics and gear- 
cutting, he pursued a career in the manufacture and repair of 
machinery, during the course of which he founded a number of 
successful businesses and received patents on a variety of mechan- 
ical devices. His mechanical interests evolved early into a lifelong 
passion for horology, the science of measuring time, and he both 
made some remarkable clocks and assembled an important collec- 
tion of old and rare timepieces. 
Early in this century James Arthur became associated with the 
American Museum of Natural History, and began to expand his 
interest in time to evolutionary time, and his interest in mechanisms 
to that most precise and delicate mechanism of them all, the human 
brain. The ultimate expression of his fascination with evolution and 
the brain was James Arthur’s bequest to the American Museum per- 
mitting the establishment of the James Arthur Lectures on the Evo- 
lution of the Human Brain. The first James Arthur Lecture was 
delivered on March 15, 1932, two years after Mr. Arthur’s death, 
and the series has since continued annually, without interruption. 
