Theodore Downs; Page Museum Founder

Theodore “Ted” Downs, 77, paleontologist who launched the Page Museum to house finds from the La Brea tar pits. Downs, paleontologist for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, was born in Chicago and attended Kansas State Teachers College. After serving in the Army Medical Department during World War II, he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate at UC Berkeley and a fellowship to Caltech. Downs spent his entire career at the museum, and in 1961 persuaded the National Science Foundation to fund a wing for the museum’s paleontology collection in Exposition Park. A year later, he began developing a museum in Hancock Park named for benefactor George C. Page. Downs led several research expeditions throughout the Western United States and Mexico and published about 40 scientific papers on his research into mammals of the Cenozoic period. On March 11 in Los Angeles.