Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, born into a family of legendary bankers but drawn to the natural world. By the age of twenty, he had obsessively collected over 46,000 stuffed birds, insects, and mammals, employing an army of hundreds of professional hunters throughout the world. For his twenty-first birthday present, his father built him a private museum in the corner of the Rothschild estate at Tring Park: when it was opened to the public in 1892, it attracted 30,000 visitors a year, a staggering number in those days. Upon his death in 1937, Rothschild’s museum was bequeathed to the Natural History Museum. CREDIT: NHM Images