John Hammond

"Welcome to Jurassic Park" - John Hammond

John Parker Hammond (b. 14 March 1928) was the CEO and creator of Jurassic Park. He founded the company InGen and the Hammond Foundation. He had at least one daughter, two grandchildren (Tim and Lex Murphy), a sibling (who has to be a sister, as Hammond's nephew has the surname of Ludlow, not Hammond) and a nephew, Peter Ludlow. According to the 1998 game Jurassic Park: Trespasser, he was born on March 14, 1928.

Jurassic Park
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
In the film, John Hammond is somewhat similar to his novel counterpart, but he is not as much of a dark character. He also cares about his dinosaurs the same, but understands the circumstances when the park fails. Unlike his novel appearance, John escapes Jurassic Park and agrees with Dr. Grant that the park was a failure and should not be endorsed.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Four years after the Isla Nublar Incident, John resides in a mansion. He was fired as CEO of InGen and replaced by his nephew, Peter Ludlow. He had become a naturalist rather than continue being a industrialist. He was seen talking with Dr. Malcolm about sending a team to Isla Sorna to document the animals. Malcolm becomes angry when John is still the same deep inside, but reluctantly goes. He is briefly seen in the San Diego Incident CNN broadcast saying that the dinosaurs should be left alone on Isla Sorna.

Jurassic Park III
Hammond is only mentioned by Dr. Grant in a conference. Grant still didn't agree with John's original intentions. It is possible that Hammond had infact passed away by 2001 as in the last movie, he was seen on life support and needed to stay in bed alot. This is unlikely though, as if he had passed away then it would have been mentioned; he is, likely, still alive as of 2001

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.

Family

 * Unnamed daughter
 * Unnamed former son-in-law
 * Tim Murphy (grandson)
 * Lex Murphy (granddaughter)
 * Unnamed sister (Peter Ludlow's mother)
 * Unnamed brother-in-law (Peter Ludlow's father)
 * Peter Ludlow (nephew)
 * Peter Ludlow's wife (niece-in-law)
 * Peter Ludlow's children (great-nephews and nieces)

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.

Trespasser
In the canon of the 1998 Trespasser video game, John Hammond is stated to have been born on March 14th, 1928. It is also confirmed that he first got his idea of cloning dinosaurs in 1951, when he was only 23 years old. In 1979, it is stated that John Hammond and Norman Atherton founded International Genetic Technologies Inc. (InGen). In 1982, he assigned Robert Muldoon to work at Jurassic Park, and he hired two employees; Dennis Nedry and Henry Wu. In 1982, one day at 3AM, 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 27th, 1989, John Hammond put his park under a de-construction phase. Hammond went Bankrupt, and InGen began began to strip buildings on Site B for anything valuable. His nephew, Peter Ludlow, took control of InGen in October, 1996.

The Game
Hammond does not physically appear in Telltale Games's Jurassic Park: The Game, although his helicopter is briefly seen at the end of Episode 1. Throughout the game, it is revealed that Hammond, despite his outward kindness, was much more greedy and manipulative than he had appeared in the film, more akin to the novel Hammond.

He had chosen Henry Wu as the lead geneticist in favor of Laura Sorkin, as Wu had come up with an inexpensive shortcut in cloning the dinosaurs - Sorkin had wanted to take the time to fill the whole genome of each species, but Wu had suggested inserting frog DNA into the gaps to speed up the process. Because of this, many of the dinosaurs developed features that were unseen in the Mesozoic era, such as a larger size for the Velociraptors, a venom and frill for the Dilophosaurus, and a movement-based visual acuity for the Tyrannosaurus rex. It also enabled the dinosaurs to change sex and breed.

Isla Nublar had been populated by a tribe of Costa Ricans - Nima Cruz's people - but Hammond had ordered the tribe deported so that he would have an out-of-the-way area to build his park. Although he may not have known it, the tribe had been sent to slums with poor living conditions and a great deal of crime.

Trivia

 * Hammond is usually likened to Walt Disney, and his park to Disneyland.
 * Hammond was the only character on the island to have stayed there during the Isla Nublar Incident and not be harmed or confronted by the carnivorous dinosaurs.
 * Both Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton have described him as "the dark side of Walt Disney."
 * In one script he was supposed to fall down a hill like in the novel, but he hits his head and becomes unconcious, and then drowns in a puddle of water. And before the end credits a fly lands on his hand.
 * His catchphrase what he said throughout the film was ''spared no expence