John Hammond

"Welcome to Jurassic Park" -John Hammond

John Parker Hammond was the CEO and creator of Jurassic Park. He founded the company InGen. He had at least one daughter, two grandchildren (Tim and Lex Murphy), a sister and a nephew, Peter Ludlow. According to the 1998 game Jurassic Park: Trespasser, he was born on March 14, 1928.

Jurassic Park (novel)
In the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, John Hammond was the idealist dreamer CEO of Jurassic Park. He had little interest in the technicalities of genetic engineering, but great interest in making a profit. His darker side is shown more often, he is frequently upset with his employees and seems to care more about his animals than the people on the island. In the book, Hammond got eaten by Compys while running from what he thought was the Juvenile T-Rex. He did not appear in the The Lost World novel.

Jurassic Park (film)/The Lost World: Jurassic Park
In the movies, Hammond was more grandfatherly and sympathetic. Hammond survived in the first film, escaping from Isla Nublar. After the incident, due to his actions almost bankrupting InGen, the board of directors fired him; Hammond retired quietly in his New York mansion. In The Lost World, he finances a scientific expedition to Isla Sorna, to collect biological and photographic data on the Site B dinosaurs. He was not featured in Jurassic Park III because most of the film took place on Isla Sorna and of pacing reasons and script changes.

In the comics
CEO of InGen and the head of Jurassic Park. Tours Donald Gennaro around Isla Nublar during the construction of Isla Nublar in an attempt to sway him into his (Hammond’s) favour. Gennaro seems unimpressed by everything he witnesses, despite witnessing the birth of the Park’s first dinosaur, a young Tyrannosaurus rex. Around this time, he hires Dennis Nedry as one of the Park’s technicians. In 1993, he invites Drs. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler to Isla Nublar to receive the opinion of dinosaur experts on his island; in turn, he funds their palaeontological dig for three years. He leads the guests on a tour through the Visitor’s Centre, but becomes trapped there when the systems are messed with by Nedry to buy him time to partake in industrial espionage, and in the aftermath as John “Ray” Arnold attempts to reboot the systems. Eventually, he escapes from the island, and appears to be furious at BioSyn (a rival company of InGen); having figured out that it was they who had hired Nedry to sabotage the systems of Jurassic Park and attempt to steal embryos. In turn, Hammond orders some of his men to plant a bomb in a major BioSyn facility, and soon receives a phone call from an enraged Steingarten (head of BioSyn), although he casually shrugs off his opponents accusations. At the same time, he sends a group of helicopters out to the South American rainforest to find the missing Grant, Sattler, Ian Malcolm and Robert Muldoon. Shortly afterwards, with reports of a wounded soldier likely having been washed up from Isla Nublar, Hammond hires Grant, Sattler, Muldoon and Edgar Prather to search the island and find out what the army are doing there and what the “Green Flame” mentioned by the injured man was.

Operation Genesis
Hammond is featured in Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis as your employer, and the CEO of your park. He gives you a star rating of your park if anything changes, and gives you the board of InGen. Hammond will only send you mail after you have opened your park.

In Trespasser
In the canon of the 1998 Trespasser video game, John Hammond is stated to have been born on March 14(th), 1928. It is also confirmed that he first got his idea of cloning dinosaurs in 1951, when he was only 23 years old. In 1982, he hired two employees, of his, Dennis Nedry, and, Henry Wu. In 1982, one day, at 3 .A.M., the very first strand of dinosaur DNA first appeared, on Dennis Nedry's computer screen. In 1985, the first-ever InGen dinosaurs, including the very first Velociraptors, were bred. After the Isla Nublar Incident, which occurred, on August 27(th), 1989, John Hammond put his park under a de-construction phase, of some sort.

Trivia

 * Hammond is usually likened to Walt Disney and Disney Land.
 * Both Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton have described him as "the dark side of Walt Disney."