Griffin was a collector from the Needle.
Griffin's collection of creatures included Mandelbrots, a Dodo, bog wraiths, Serpentoidians, Hypnoredips, a robo-destroyer, a leopard woman, a man with three eyes and Mutant Marvin the Two-Horned Unicorn.
Griffin travelled to San Francisco in 2002, where he attempted to collect creatures that were falling through a dimensional scar. Griffin's efforts to capture these creatures by the Eighth Doctor, who was trying to seal the rift.
Griffin became obsessed with defining the Doctor, believing that the disruption to reality caused by the scar was due to the Doctor's own insanity rather than his own manipulation of it. As Griffin tried to use the scar to rewrite the Doctor's biodata, the Doctor pushed Griffin into the dimensional scar. (PROSE: Unnatural History)
Personality
Although he considered himself a scientist, when faced with data that contradicted what he already 'knew', Griffin sought to make the new data fit his theories rather than alter his own views to accommodate new data, essentially believing that the universe was wrong rather than consider that he might not understand.