The Multifarious Mr. Banks

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Musgrave
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Botanical Garden ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
British Science ◽  
George Iii

As official botanist on James Cook's first circumnavigation, the longest-serving president of the Royal Society, advisor to King George III, the “father of Australia,” and the man who established Kew as the world's leading botanical garden, Sir Joseph Banks was integral to the English Enlightenment. Yet he has not received the recognition that his multifarious achievements deserve. This book reveals the true extent of Banks's contributions to science and Britain. From an early age Banks pursued his passion for natural history through study and extensive travel, most famously on the HMS Endeavour. He went on to become a pivotal figure in the advancement of British scientific, economic, and colonial interests. With his enquiring, enterprising mind and extensive network of correspondents, Banks's reputation and influence were global. Drawing widely on Banks's writings, the book sheds light on his profound impact on British science and empire in an age of rapid advancement.

Charles Watson-Wentworth, second marquess of Rockingham, F. R. S. (1730-1782): some aspects of his scientific interests

1956 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-76 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Complicated Structure ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
George Iii

'I cannot but wish that our nation abounded with more frequent examples of persons, of like rank and ability with your lordship, equally desirious of promoting . . . every other branch of natural science that lends to the honour and benefit of our country.’ So James Bradley, a member of the Council of the Royal Society addressed the Earl of Macclesfield, P. R. S. from 1752-1764. Bradley’s wish, so like Sprat’s of nearly ninety years before, was realized in the person of the second Marquess of Rockingham, elected F. R. S. at the age of 21 on 7 November 1751, who died on 1 June 1782 at the early age of fifty-two. Hitherto, attention has been concentrated on the political aspects of Rockingham’s career. This is not unnatural since Rockingham was twice prime minister: at the age of thirty-five and also at his death. He was an outstanding advocate of proposals to grant independence to the American colonies, and a champion of those who suffered under the crippling disabilities of the Test Acts. His only biographer, Lord Albemarle, ransacked Rockingham’s papers to print a rechauffé of letters concerned entirely with the political kaleidoscope of the eventful thirty years in which his subject played such a leading role (2). Subsequent historians have either been bemused by the towering personality of Burke and tended to regard Rockingham as Burke’s patron, or have been so intent in unravelling the complicated structure of patronage and political connexion in the age of George III that Rockingham has appeared as just another Whig (3). * Numbers in parentheses refer to the numbered notes at the end of this paper.

scholarly journals Sidnie Milana Manton, 4 May 1902 - 2 January 1979

1980 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 327-356 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
The Family ◽  
Wood Carving ◽  
Natural Inclination

Sidnie Milana Manton, one of the outstanding zoologists of her time, and the elder of the two daughters of George Sidney Frederick Manton and Milana Angele Terese ( née d’Humy), was born in London on 4 May 1902. Both sides of the family seem to have produced craftsmen of one sort or another and this ability to use, and enjoy using, her hands she inherited in full measure. Her father, a dental surgeon, was skilled in wood-carving and also worked with metals and enamels. One of his ancestors was Joe Manton, the gunsmith, a celebrated maker of flintlock guns, who also ran a fashionable London shooting range in the early 19th century. Her mother, of mixed Scottish and French ancestry, came from a family with a strong artistic bent, and was herself gifted in this direction, being skilled at drawing and needlework and did design work for Liberty’s. Sidnie enjoyed a comfortable home in which the constant example of two manually skilled parents who were always making things, from jewellery to lenses and furnishings, and who encouraged youthful assistants, had a great influence on her. Not surprisingly, as a child much of her spare time was spent making things, and she was also interested in pets, and in drawing creatures that she had collected. A probably natural inclination to collect plants and animals was encouraged from an early age, especially by her mother, who aroused an interest in natural history in both Sidnie and her sister. This led to remarkable results for not only were both destined to become professional biologists, Sidnie a zoologist and Irene a botanist, but both were eventually elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society—the only case in its histoiy of two sisters achieving this distinction.

Edward Heron-Allen FRS (1861–1943): a review of his scientific career, with an annotated bibliography of his foraminiferal publications

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Hodgkinson ◽  
John E. Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Scientific Career ◽  
History Museum ◽  
First Time

ABSTRACT: In spite of his many other interests, Edward Heron-Allen also worked for nearly 50 years as a scientist on minute shelled protists, called foraminifera, much of it in an unpaid, unofficial capacity at The Natural History Museum, London, and notably in collaboration with Arthur Earland. During this career he published more than 70 papers and obtained several fellowships, culminating in 1919 in his election to the Royal Society. Subsequently, he bequeathed his foraminiferal collections and fine library to the Museum, and both are housed today in a room named in his honour. In this paper, for the first time, an assessment of his scientific accomplishments is given, together with a full annotated bibliography of his publications held in the Heron-Allen Library. This is part of a project to produce a bibliography of his complete publications, recently initiated by the Heron-Allen Society.

The Royal Society Specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden, 1722-1799

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-224 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Important Link ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Herbarium Collections ◽  
Important Evidence

The deed of conveyance of 1722, by which Sir Hans Sloane gave the Society of Apothecaries control of their ‘Physick Garden at Chelsey’ in perpetuity, forged an important link between the Apothecaries and the Royal Society, one that has lasted to the present day. For the next 75 years the Apothecaries paid an annual tribute of dried plant specimens to the Royal Society as proof that they were continuing to use the garden for its proper purpose. These specimens, which have survived the centuries with remarkably little damage, now provide important evidence of what was being grown in the garden at the time and may also be nomenclaturally important as representing plants given botanical names by Philip Miller in 1768. A careful search in the herbarium collections of the Department of Botany in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where the Royal Society specimens are now held, has resulted in the location of all but a small number of the 3750 specimens that were sent. Tracing them has not been easy for a number of reasons, not least because they are now dispersed among the several million specimens in the Museum’s collections. The names of the plants used by the Apothecaries in the lists that were the starting point for the search were those current at the time, hence of pre-Linnaean character, and had first to be linked to present-day names before the work could begin. Some lists of names were found to be inaccurate and some were entirely misleading.

scholarly journals The English Connection: Jacob and Johann Philipp Breyne, James Petiver and Plants: The Correspondence between the Breynes and Petiver from the 1690s

2022 ◽  
Vol 128 (5) ◽  
pp. 167-198
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pękacka-Falkowska
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central

The article discusses the hitherto unknown correspondence between the Danzig (present-day Gdańsk) botanist Jacob Breyne, his son Johann Philipp Breyne, and James Petiver in the last decade of the seventeenth century. Their correspondence documents contacts between one of the most important naturalists of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the seventeenth century and members of the Royal Society. The content of the letters reveals how books, naturalia and various artefacts circulated between Western and East-Central Europe. It also reveals the principles of reciprocity and friendship followed by those who conducted inquiries into natural history.

John MacCulloch, F. R. S., at Addiscombe: The lectureships in chemistry and geology

1980 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-183 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Scientific Competence ◽  
Geological Work ◽  
Teaching Commitment

The eminent Georgian scientist John MacCulloch (1773—1835) is remembered today chiefly as a practical geologist but his many publications show that he also made notable contributions in such fields as chemistry, medicine and natural history; indeed his wide scientific competence seems to have been a significant factor in his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society, for it is noted on his certificate of application that he was ‘very conversant with various branches of science’. Elsewhere it is recorded that MacCulloch ‘was as willing to impart information as he was eager to acquire it’ and in this context his activities as a teacher in the East India Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe deserve study: first, because the later part of his life, during which he taught geology, is poorly understood; and secondly, since his last two geological books were affected by his teaching commitment at Addiscombe. In this paper MacCulloch’s connexion with the college is investigated using hitherto unpublished manuscript records and some of his geological work is re-assessed in terms of the facts revealed.

scholarly journals VI. A botanical invitation forward an history of the plants of Swisserland; by Dr. John Jacob Scheuchzer, M. D. F. R. S. Sent to Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. Pr. R. S. To be communicated to the Royal Society. Translated by Mr. Zollman, F. R. S

1731 ◽  
Vol 37 (421) ◽  
pp. 219-220
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
History Of

It is not my Intention to enter into a long Detail of what I have hitherto performed in Natural History, both in general, and that of Swisserland in particular, left I might seem guilty of Vanity even in merely relating it.

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