John Hammond

"Hammond was flamboyant, a born showman" - Michael Crichton, depicting John Hammond in Jurassic Park (Novel)

Doctor John Parker Hammond (Film and Trespasser Canons), or John Alfred Hammond (Novel Canon) 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 novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, John Alfred Hammond was the flamboyant and idealist dreamer that discovered the fantastical way to clone extinct animals from blood-sucking insects. He was also the CEO of International Genetic Technologies, Inc. and creator of Jurassic Park. He had little interest in the technicalities of genetic engineering, but great interest in making a profit and progress. His darker side is shown more often, as he is frequently upset with his employees and seems to care more about his animals than the people on the island. Hammond has drastic mood swings and quickly turns from angered to sympathetic. He was entirely confident that the people of the world would be satisfied with his park in Costa Rica, and that his parks in Europe and Japan shall be successful in the following five years, earning an annual revenue of over twenty-billion dollars a year, more income than any other zoo or theme park in the world. Later in the novel, Hammond got eaten by Compys while running from what he thought was the Juvenile T-Rex. He did not appear, but is only mentioned in the The Lost World. Hammond is 76 years old in the novel, meaning he was born around 1913.

Jurassic Park
In the film, John Hammond is a flamboyant venture capitalist from Scotland, building his fortune first in Pettycoat Lane, England. He also held parks in Kenya, Costa Rica, and other tropical locations. He is somewhat similar to his novel counterpart, but he is not as much of a dark character. While the novel's Hammond is cold, ruthless and in many ways the stereotypical businessman (i.e., uncaring about people, Machiavellian in his attempts to control his creation) the film's Hammond is affable and kind and is genuinely concerned about the well-being of his grandchildren and the other visitors and workers at the park. He also cares about his dinosaurs the same, but understands the circumstances when the park fails. The turning point for Hammond in the film is when Ellie Sattler bluntly tells him that he "never had control" and that the only thing that matters now is the survival of the people they love. Hammond is visibly struck by Ellie's words and spends the remainder of the film doing whatever he can to make sure that they all survive Jurassic Park. 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, an ailing 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 an industrialist. He was seen talking with Ian Malcolm about sending a team to Isla Sorna to document the animals. Ian 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 and ends with Ian's quote, "life will find a way."

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 in fact passed away by 2001 as in the last movie, he was seen on life support and needed to stay in bed a lot. This is unlikely though, as if he had passed away then it would have been mentioned; he is, likely, still alive as of 2001. His fate after Jurassic Park Three/Two is unknown (movie-canon).

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. He left home at 15, and went from Scotland down to London. He quickly built a reputation for being a mysterious and shady investor, multi-millionaire, and jovial mad-scientist. In 1979, John Hammond and Norman Atherton, a stanford geneticist, founded International Genetic Technologies Inc. (InGen) with funding provided by Hamaguri and Densaka, two Japanese investment firms. He observed offshore islands in the Caribbean and Costa Rica in 1980, choosing Isla Sorna for his secret project. In 1982, he assigned Robert Muldoon to work at Jurassic Park, and he hired two employees; Dennis Nedry, and Henry Wu, the protege of the late Norman Atherton. 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 27, 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 when Hammond was 68 years old. Everything about Hammond's past was told in his novel, Jurassic Time, which he wrote shortly after the San Diego Incident, to tell the public about the true story about InGen's rise to power, and the shattering of his dream.

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 unconscious, and then drowns in a puddle of water. And before the end credits a fly lands on his hand.
 * It should be noted, that Hammond has a different middle name in the novel canon than in the film canon. In both Trespasser and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, his middle name is said to be Parker. However, in the novel, Donald Gennaro describes "...and John Alfred Hammond had gotten his money..."
 * His catchphrase through out the first Jurassic Park film was "spared no expense."
 * Curiously, Hammond's views on genetics and science differs within canons. In both the novel and Trespasser canon, Hammond says he had a childs idea of science: test tubes, explosions, and miracles. However, the film states that he is a Doctor, which usually requires years in scientific classes.