Prof's portrait missing in action

A former professor's portrait was recently stolen from Leidy Labs. Edward Drinker Cope taught at Penn from 1887 to 1897. Former Penn Paleobiology Professor Edward Drinker Cope is missing from Leidy Laboratories -- or at least a picture of him is. According to members of the Penn Biology Department, a 27 1/4" x 22" portrait of the professor was stolen during the weekend of March 25 from above the first-floor staircase of Leidy Labs, where it had hung for more than 20 years. Cope, who served as a professor of Geology and Paleobiology at Penn from 1887 until his death in 1897, was part of the Penn-based explosion of knowledge about the physical world and human form. The portrait of Cope was painted in 1897. "It was there on Saturday, but when we came in on Monday it was gone," Biology Lab Coordinator Bob Kuniewicz said. "Someone stole it." Penn Police have been conducting an ongoing investigation since the portrait was reported missing three weeks ago. A story about a new Cope biography appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer around the same time, leading some to suggest that the picture was taken as a keepsake or prank. Although the portrait has little resale value, it does have historical significance to the Biology Department -- especially to faculty who are members of the quasi-secret Edward Drinker Cope Society, which is offering a $100 no-questions-asked reward for the portrait's safe return. "It's not like a million-dollar microscope was stolen," Biology Department Chairman Andrew Binns said. "It's like a picture of your great-grandfather. You don't really know who it is, but if someone came to your home and stole it off your living room wall, you would be a little miffed." A member of the American Academy of Science, Cope discovered more than 1,200 species of extinct vertebrates. But he was best-known for head-on "fossil feuds" with his one-time Penn mentor Joseph Leidy and Yale University paleontologist O.C. Marsh. It seems, however, that Cope's legacy is rather bone-chilling. Legend has it that when Cope worked at Penn in the late 19th century, he made an agreement with a group of Paleobiology colleagues that would allow the other scientists to do a post-mortem on the person who died first. Cope passed away in 1897, and his skeleton wound up on the shelves of the University's Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology. And besides the recent theft of his portrait, a bronze bust of Cope was stolen from Leidy Laboratories in 1996. It was subsequently found in a Pennsylvania State University dormitory room among memorabilia stolen from other colleges and universities. So does a "Curse of Cope" actually exist? "I don't think so," Binns said, "but we should do some forensic analysis."