John Hammond
Dr. John Parker Hammond was the billionaire scientist and businessman who owned InGen, and he was the grandfather to Tim and Lex Murphy and the uncle of Peter Ludlow. John Hammond was the man behind the dream that was Jurassic Park. The scientists at his company had discovered a method of extracting dinosaur blood from mosquitoes fossilized in amber, gained by funding many paleontological digs. Using the DNA they extracted, they were able to clone living dinosaurs.
Hammond decided to build a theme park, where people could come and view the animals. Prior to establishing Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar in Costa Rica, Hammond had dreamed of an amphitheater in San Diego. He eventually abandoned the idea in favor of the more lavish Isla Nublar location. However, as the facility neared its completion, disaster struck. A worker was killed by a velociraptor, and his family filed a $20,000,000 lawsuit against InGen. This made InGen's investors very nervous, and they demanded Hammond bring in several experts to endorse the park. Thus, Hammond brought in Doctors Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm and Ellie Sattler, along with lawyer Donald Gennaro as well as his grandchildren, to view the park.
Disaster struck again however, when greedy employee Dennis Nedry turned traitor over not being paid what he saw as a fair wage and sabotaged the park systems, allowing the dinosaurs to escape in order to steal embryoes to deliver to InGen's rival, BioSyn. Hammond kept his cool, though. He coached Ellie through the steps to restore the power so that they could call for help, and looked after a badly-injured Malcolm.
Following the incident on Isla Nublar, Hammond's posistion as company chief was wrested from him by Peter Ludlow. Ludlow planned to exploit Site B on Isla Sorna, which was the "factory floor," as Hammond put it. Hammond knew public opinion was the only way to prevent Ludlow from pillaging Site B, and so he sent in Malcolm and Dr. Sarah Harding, Nick Van Owen and Eddie Carr to document the dinosaurs. In the end, his plan succeeded despite the intervention of Ludlow and his crew of mercenaries, and Isla Sorna was designated a protected wildlife preserve by the Costa Rican government.
He later died of unknown causes. Before dying, however, he entrusted Isla Nublar to Masrani Global Corporation CEO Simon Masrani, and from it, Masrani built Jurassic World from the ruins of Jurassic Park. Two statues of Hammond were erected in Jurassic World's Innovation Center. One depicted him kneeling and holding a baby dinosaur while his grandson stood beside him. Another, more stately one, stood outside the Hammond Creation Lab, which was of course named after him.
