Marcello Malpighi

Marcello Malpighi was born on March 10, 1628 at Crevalcore near Bologna, Italy. The son of well-to-do parents, Malpighi was educated in his native city, entering the University of Bologna at the age of 17. Both parents died when he was 21, but he was able, nevertheless, to continue his studies.

In 1653 Malpighi left his family villa and returned to the University of Bologna to study anatomy.
Malpigi was made a reader at Bologna three years later, and then a professor of physics at Pisa, where he began to apply himself to a more experimental method of research. Weary of philosophical contention, in 1660, Malpighi returned to Bologna and dedicated himself to the study of anatomy.

In the early 1660s Malpigi began his studies of lung tissue, using frog lung. This was well suited to the early microscope, which had developed in Galileo's time after 1600 but was optically poor; much of the best work in the 1650s was done using a single lens rather than a compound system. Frog lung is almost transparent, with a simple and conspicuous capillary system.

Malpighi was able to observe the frog's capillaries for the first time and to see that it was linked to the venous system on one side and to the arterial system on the other, thereby vindicating and completing William Harvey's work on the animal circulation.

As a result of a glowing recommendation from mathematician and friend Giovanni Borelli, Malpighi was invited to the University of Messina where he occupied the post of a professor from 1662.

Malpighi studied the brain, kidney, liver, nerves and skin, identifying new structures. For example, after he dissected the body of a black man, Malpighi made some groundbreaking headway into the origin of black skin. He found that the black pigment was associated with a layer of mucus just beneath the skin.

Portrait of Marcello Malpighi pointing to the fontanel of a baby's skull, by an unknown painter

In 1666 Malpighi was the first to see the red blood cells and to attribute the color of blood to them.

In 1669 the microscope let Malpighi discover that the silk worm does not use lungs to breathe, but small holes in their skin called spiracles. This turned out to be true of all insects.

Malpighi spent a great deal of time studying chick embryos at various stages of maturity. By studying with his microscope the embryos, Malpighi was able to observe the formation of the structures that become the chicks' hearts and blood vessels. This work he documented in De Formatione de pulli in ovo in 1673.

In the 1670s Malpighi turned to plant anatomy, discovering stomata in leaves and describing the development of the plant embryo.

A talented sketch artist, Malpighi seems to have been the first author to have made detailed drawings of individual organs of flowers.

Malpighi’s work at Messina attracted the attention of the Royal Society in London, whose secretary, Henry Oldenburg, extended him an invitation in 1668 to correspond with him. The Royal Society published two volumes of his botanical and zoological works in 1675 and 1679. Another edition followed in 1687, and a supplementary volume in 1697.

Marcello Malpighi, oil on canvas by Carlo Cignani

His findings were not received well by his colleagues who despised Malpighi because of his non-Bolognese ancestry. His views evoked increasing controversy and dissent, mainly from envy and lack of understanding on the part of his colleagues.

In 1684 Malpighi's villa was burned, his apparatus and microscopes shattered, and his papers, books, and manuscripts destroyed.

Most probably as a compensatory move for the opposition he faced and in recognition of his stature, in 1691 Pope Innocent XII invited Malpighi to Rome as papal physician. He taught medicine in the Papal Medical School and wrote a long treatise about his studies which he donated to the Royal Society of London.

Marcello Malpighi died of apoplexy (an old-fashioned term for a stroke or stroke-like symptoms) in Rome on November 29, 1694, at the age of 66. In accordance with his wishes, an autopsy was performed. The Royal Society published his studies in 1696.

Marcello Malpighi is buried in the church of the Santi Gregorio e Siro, in Bologna, where nowadays can be seen a marble monument to the scientist with an inscription in Latin remembering – among other things – his "SUMMUM INGENIUM / INTEGERRIMAM VITAM / FORTEM STRENUAMQUE MENTEM / AUDACEM SALUTARIS ARTIS AMOREM" (great genius, honest life, strong and tough mind, daring love for the medical art).

Malpighi's tomb in Bologna

Because of this work, many microscopic anatomical structures are named after Malpighi, including a skin layer (Malpighi layer) and two different Malpighian corpuscles in the kidneys and the spleen, as well as the Malpighian tubules in the excretory system of insects.

Sources Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999, Comptons Encyclopedia .

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste de Monet Lamarck was born on Aug. 1, 1744, in in Bazentin, Picardy, northern France, as the eleventh child in an impoverished aristocratic family.

                                                 EARLY LIFE, MILITARY AND MEDICAL CAREER

His parents wanted him to become a priest and yielding to their wishes, Lamarck enrolled in a Jesuit college in Amiens in the late 1750s.

After the death of his father in 1760, Lamarck bought himself a horse, and rode across the country to join the French army, which was in Germany at the time. Lamarck served in the army from 1761 to 1768.

He fought in the Pomeranian War (1757–62) with Prussia, and was awarded a commission for bravery on the battlefield.

While posted in Monaco, Lamarck became interested in botany and the classification of plants after coming across Traité des plantes usuelles, a book by James Francis Chomel.

Lamarck retired from the army in 1768 after getting injured. With a pension of only 400 francs a year, Lamarck needed to pursue a profession. He decided to study medicine, and supported himself by working in a bank office.

CAREER AS A BIOLOGIST

After  four years, Lamarck gave up his medical studies as a result of his elder brother's persuasion. Instead he became a botany student under Bernard de Jussieu, a notable French naturalist. Under Jussieu, Lamarck spent ten years studying French flora.

After finishing his studies, in 1778, Lamarck published a three-volume work on the plants of France, entitled Flore françoise.

After the publication of his book, Lamarck worked mainly in zoology, especially on the invertebrates (a term he introduced).

When the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (Museum of Natural History) was founded in Paris in 1793, Lamarck was placed in charge of the invertebrate animals at the museum. From his work there, he was able to revise the classification of lower animals that had been unfinished by the Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus.

Lamarck's continued study of invertebrates led to the publication of his major work, Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertebres (The Natural History of Invertebrate Animals, published in 1815-22).

In an 1802 publication, Lamarck became one of the first to use the term biology in its modern sense.

In hi 1809 publication Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck expounded a comprehensive evolutionary synthesis, an early, perhaps the first, theory of evolution. It was based on the notion that characteristics an organism develops during its lifetime in response to its environment are inherited by, or passed on to, its offspring.. Larmack's most quoted example is the giraffe's long neck which he suggested was a result, over generations, of the animal reaching up for food.

His theory attracted ridicule and was largely abandoned after Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, published 30 years after Lamarck's death, disagreed with Lamarck's conclusions.

Lamarck's search for the unities that underlie the natural world led to his increasing isolation from other scientists. He died lonely, blind and in poverty in Paris on December 18, 1829.

At Lamarck's passing, his family was so poor they had to apply to the Academie for financial assistance. Lamarck's books and the contents of his home were sold at auction, and he was buried in a temporary lime-pit.

Lamarck, late in life

Although Lamarck's theories on evolution were discarded, he succeeded in establishing procedures of inquiry for the study of invertebrates that were useful long after his death.

Sources Comptons Encyclopedia, Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999.

Alexander Fleming

EARLY LIFE

Sir Alexander Fleming was born on August 6, 1881 at Lochfield, a remote small sheep farm outside Darvel, a small town in Ayrshire, Scotland east of Kilmarnock.

Alexander was the third of the four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) from his second marriage to Grace Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighboring farmer. Hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage.

Alexander's parents ran an 800-acre farm a mile from the nearest house. The Fleming children spent much of their of time ranging through the streams, valleys, and moors of the countryside. "We unconsciously learned a great deal from nature,"  Fleming said later in his life.

Alexander attended local schools, Louden Moor School and Darvel School, walking four miles to school each day over the moors. He later earned a two-year scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy.

His elder brother Tom had studied medicine and opened a practice in London. Alexander moved to England's capital city when he was about 14 to join him and three other siblings and attended the Regent Street Polytechnic Institute there.

Alexander and two of his brothers joined the London Scottish regiment as volunteers with the view of taking part in The Boer War. They honed their shooting, swimming, and even water polo skills, but never made it to the Transvaal.

At the turn of the century, when Alexander was 20, the Flemings' uncle died and left them each £250. Tom's medical practice was now thriving and he encouraged his younger brother to put his legacy toward the study of medicine.

After taking top scores in the qualifying examinations, Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington in 1903; he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction three years later.

WORK

After completing school Fleming was employed by a shipping firm, as an office boy, earning ten shillings a week.

In 1901, Fleming quit his job and went to St. Mary Hospital to study medicine.  He qualified with distinction in 1906 and began working at St. Mary's as a research assistant for Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy .

His switch to bacteriology was a surprise: If Fleming had taken a position as a surgeon, he would have had to leave St. Mary's. The captain of the rifle club, of which Fleming was a member knew that. Wishing to retain Fleming in the team the captain suggested that he join the research department at St Mary's.

Fleming gained a BSc degree with Gold Medal in Bacteriology in 1908, and became a lecturer at St Mary's until The First World War in 1914.

When news reached Fleming of Paul Ehrlich’s innovative chemical treatment for syphilis, salvarsan, he became one of the first doctors to administer the new bacterial agent. He did so with the new and difficult technique of intravenous injection. So popular was Fleming's  new medical technique that he gained the nickname "Private 606" from the fact that salvarsan was the 606th organic compound Ehrlich had tested.

When the First World War broke out, Alexander Fleming and most of his staff went to France to set up a battlefield hospital laboratory. There they encountered acute microbe infections, many arising from wounds caused by exploding shells which soldiers were dying from. Fleming started to experiment to try to find a chemical similar to salvarsan that could help fight these infections. The Scottish physician succeeded in developing a number of new treatments for those wounded by battlefield injuries and helped to reduce the mortality rate.

In 1918 Fleming returned to research and teaching at St. Mary's. Four years later, while incultering nasal secretion from a patient with an acute cold he found a remarkable element that had the power of dissolving bacteria. This bacterioiolyte element, which Fleming also found in tears and other body fluids, he isolated and called iysozyme.

Fleming retired in 1948 with the title Emeritus Professor of Bacteriolog of University of London, but continued at St Marys as head of Wright-Fleming Institute of Biology.

DISCOVERY OF PENICILLIN

Alexander Fleming is best known for discovering the antibiotic substance penicillin in 1928, which marked the start of today's antibiotics.

Stuart Craddock was a Research Scholar working with Alexander Fleming in the Inoculation Department.  On January 9, 1929, he was the first person to be treated with penicillin, for his infected sinuses. However, partly due to problems mass producing it, the antibiotic wasn’t widely used to treat infections until World War II.

Picture below is a sample of penicillin mold presented by Alexander Fleming to Douglas Macleod, in 1935.

Science Museum London / Science and Society Picture Library

Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine with Fleming for their work. Fleming humbly responded to receiving the award  “Nature makes penicillin; I just found it."

Fleming ever made any money from his discovery. He had no wish to do so.

PERSONAL LIFE

Fleming was quiet, reserved, with a strong competitive streak and usually clad in a bow tie. Even in his celebrity he never mastered the conventions of polite society.

In 1915, Fleming married Sarah Marion McElroy of Killala, Ireland, who died in 1949. Their son became a general medical practitioner.

Fleming married again in 1953, his bride was Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Voureka, a Greek member of his research team at St. Mary's.

A keen amateur painter, many of  Fleming's friends were artists.

Fleming was long a member of the Chelsea Arts Club, a private club for artists of all genres. He was admitted to the club after he made "germ paintings," in which he drew with a culture loop using spores of highly pigmented bacteria. The bacteria were invisible while he painted, but when cultured made bright colors.

DEATH AND LEGACY

Sir Alexander Fleming died on March 11, 1955 of a heart attack in London and is buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Alexander Fleming has a blue plaque in Chelsea, London SW3.

Every bullring in Spain has a monument to Alexander Fleming whose discovery of penicillin saved countless toreadors from dying of gangrene after being gored by bulls.

Source Pbs.org

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, the same day as Abraham Lincoln.

His father, Robert Darwin, was a successful local doctor, but was stern and critical towards him.

Darwin's mother, Susannah Wedgwood, was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the famous potter. She died when he was eight. His three elder sisters reared him.

His other Grandfather was Erasmus Darwin, a naturalist, poet and philosopher who had put forward his own theory of evolution which Darwin disowned.

As a boy he was so enamored with chemistry that his young friends nicknamed him "Gas".

Painting of seven-year-old Charles Darwin in 1816.

Darwin attended Shrewsbury school after his mother died. His schoolwork later suffered due to spending time shooting and rat catching. His father complained "you care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat catching and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”

Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University 1825-27. He dropped out as he could not stomach the operating theatre. Darwin found the two years there to be “intolerably dull”.

Finding himself squeamish at the sight of human blood and suffering, Darwin left Edinburgh and went to the University of Cambridge, in preparation for a life as a Church of England clergyman, which he thought would best allow him to pursue his increasing interest in natural history.

At Cambridge Charles Darwin preferred riding and shooting to studying, and along with his cousin William Darwin Fox became engrossed in the then current craze for the (competitive) collecting of beetles.

As a student at Cambridge, Darwin set up the Glutton Club to dine on "birds and beasts unknown to the human palate." He was particularly fond of puma.

Darwin also regularly ate some of the animals he discovered in his travels including puma, armadillos, and his famous giant Galapagos tortoises.

At Cambridge he came under the influence of two figures: Adam Sedgwick, a geologist, and John Stevens Henslow, a botanist. Henslow not only helped build Darwin’s self-confidence but also taught his student to be a meticulous and painstaking observer of natural phenomena and collector of specimens.

When exams loomed Darwin focused on his studies, becoming particularly enthused by the set texts by Paley which included the argument of divine design in nature.

In his finals in January 1831 Darwin shone in theology and scraped through in classics, maths and physics, coming 10th out of a pass list of 178.

Darwin was 6ft tall with a big, bushy white beard.

Darwin spent five years between 1831-36 on board a Royal Navy exploring ship, the HMS Beagle. He was the guest naturalist, which meant that he was responsible for making collections and notes about the animals, plants, and the geology of the countries they visited.

Darwin paid his own way during the Beagle voyage at £500 per annum.

HMS Beagle was a 242 ton, 10 gun, 90 ft long, Cherokee-class ship of the Royal Navy. It was launched on 11 May 1820.

Darwin's father strongly opposed Charles going on the Beagle  voyage as he felt his son's calling was to the Church.

Darwin was nearly rejected as ship's naturalist on the Beagle because of shape of his nose. The captain, Robert Fitzroy was not certain that anyone with such a broad, squat nose would have the character to survive such an arduous journey.

Modest and kind,, the amiable Darwin was nicknamed "Philos" by the crew of the Beagle.

During his five-year voyage on the Beagle to the Pacific, Darwin shared a cabin with Robert Fitzroy. The commander of the Beagle subsequently became governor of New Zealand, and a vice admiral. Later he became one of Darwin's fiercest critics on scriptural grounds. He committed suicide in 1865 for the part he played in undermining the Bible.

Quite an action man on his South American trip, Darwin rode with the toughest hauchos of the Argentine Pampas and scaled the highest peaks of the Andes.

Darwin described the meat of the agouti, a South American rodent, as “the very best meat I ever tasted.”

His observations of animals and plants (including the giant tortoises) on Galapagos Islands were different to everywhere else and even differed from island to island. He spent a year studying there which suggested to him that animals and plants were not replicas created by a heavenly snap of fingers.

Darwin was lionised on his return to London from the Beagle as a brilliant geologist. Later his 1839 Journals of Researches during Voyage of the Beagle achieved excellent sales.

Darwin drew up a list with columns headed "Marry" and "Not Marry." Pros included better than a dog, charms of music and female conversation. Some of the cons were anxiety and responsibility plus less money for books. Having come down in favor, he went to visit his cousin Emma Wedgwood and proposed to her.

On January 29. 1839 Darwin married Emma Wedgwood at Maer church in Staffordshire. (Her family lived in the Jacobean Maer Hall nearby) It was an Anglican ceremony arranged to also suit the Unitarians.

Emma Darwin, wife of Charles Darwin

Charles and Emma spent many happy years together. She did not share her husband's enthusiasm for his work and didn't pretend to find his experiments interesting.

Darwin enjoyed listening to his wife Emma playing Mendelssohn on the piano.

Between 1839-42 the Darwins lived at "Macaw Cottage,"110 Gower Street on what was then the northern edge of London.

In 1842 the Darwins moved to Down House, Downe Kent, which is situated in 16 acres in a village near Farnborough, Kent.

Originally a parsonage, Downe House wasn’t particularly inspiring but it suited Darwin’s needs. He conservatively decorated it apart from some William Morris wallpaper.

Darwin had a gravel path installed at Downe House that he would walk around each day as he thought about problems. He would stack stones at the start of his walk and the knock them down one by one as he went round, describing the difficulty of the problem as a three, four, or five-flint problem.

The Darwins moved from London to Kent due to the riots in the streets of London at the time and they felt the city was no place to bring up children.

They had ten children of which three died in infancy. He used his children as laboratory assistants.

Among his sons, were George Darwin, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, 1845-1913
Sir Francis, a moderately successful Reader in Botany at Cambridge 1848-1925
Leonard, entered Royal Engineers and took part in several scientific expeditions and became an authority on eugenics. MP for Lichfield 1892-95 1850-1943
Sir Horace, a make of scientific instruments at Cambridge 1851-1923.

One beloved daughter Annie, died tragically aged ten leaving her father and mother tremendously grieved. Her loss challenged his belief in a benevolent God.

Though Darwin recalled that "Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox" he later struggled with faith and became increasingly agnostic, particularly after the death of his daughter Anne.

Charles Darwin originally conceived his scientific theory of evolution by means of natural selection in 1838 after being puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. He put it aside for eighteen years to concentrate on writing about geology, publishing expert reports on the Beagle collections, and studying barnacles. He was stung into publishing his work when he realized a younger naturalist then working in Malaysia, Alfred Russell Wallace, had come up with the same idea.

An early draft of Origin of Species languished for 20 years in a broom cupboard by the back door of Downe house.

Darwin let his children use the original manuscript of Origin of Species as drawing paper.

AR Wallace sent his essay On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original type to Darwin. When Wallace sent his essay to Darwin, Darwin was initially concerned that Wallace would publish his theory first and claim all the credit. However, Darwin was also a generous man, and he realized that Wallace had made a significant contribution to the theory of evolution.

In the end, Darwin agreed to publish Wallace's essay alongside his own essay, an Extract from an unpublished Work on Species. The two essays were presented to the Linnean Society of London on July 1, 1858.

Darwin's theory of evolution was the continuous process of change from a simple to a more complex form of life in which those species of plants and animals survive that most readily adapt themselves to their environment and therefore become stronger and more numerous than the rest. He then concluded from this that men evolved from the higher species.

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection on the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was written in layman's terms and published on November 24, 1859. Darwin had agonized over his prose, constantly rewriting passages and the result was one of the clearest written, most lucid scientific books ever.

By the time Darwin published The Origin of Species he had has been a chronic invalid for twenty years, unable to work for days and weeks on end. He was prone to giddiness, fainting spells, shaking, nausea, dry retching and frequent migraines and suffers from panic disorder and agoraphobia.

A probable cause of Darwin's ill health was a bite by a bug during his trip to South America. The disease then possibly lay dormant in his blood for years though his health problems might well be largely psychosomatic.

In 1849 Darwin took the first of several water cures at Malvern to improve his health, however his illness has released him from many domestic and social responsibilities, thus enabling him to concentrate on his work.

On  the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin fled to the Yorkshire moors and was covered in stress related boils. He was afraid of being thought a French Republican blasphemist with his evolutionary views and was upset that people were saying that his book claimed there is no God. Despite his own religious skepticism, Darwin believed that his theory revealed the way God created us all.

All 1250 copies of The Origin of Species sold out on first day of publication in November 1859. In Darwin's lifetime there were 35 printings translated into 11 languages. Today there have been over 400 printings in around 30 languages.

‘Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution’ is an anagram of ‘Oh-ho! Words verify Natural Selection’.

In 1867 the poet Matthew Arnold predicted a “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the “sea of faith” in a post Darwinian world.    
       
Darwin's second book on evolutionary theory, 1871's The Descent of Man, created another uproar with its assertion that human beings are of the same family as apes and chimpanzees. Bishop Wilberforce summed up the ecclesiastical indignation asking one Darwinist whether he was descended from apes on his grandfather's or grandmother's side.

Darwin never actually used the term "survival of the fittest". It was Henry Spencer who originated the term in his book Principals of Biology.

Darwin proposed in The Descent of Man that music developed from mating calls and preceded speech. "Human song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of instrumental music. As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

Darwin was a gifted botanist who used his own gardens at Down to great effect. In the last two decades of his life he wrote five botanical books, describing a wide range of observational and experimental work. It included the role of insects on cross-fertilisation and the important function of the earthworm in breaking down leaves and turning earth into fertile soil.

By the end of his life Darwin was ruing over the use of his theory by Karl Marx to deny the existence of God. His Christian wife Emma was unhappy about her husband’s supposed challenge to the Bible and he regretted upsetting her.

A popular Christian urban legend known as the "Lady Hope Story" claims (variously) that he "converted" to Christianity on his deathbed after the evangelist Lady Hope visited him, but these claims were refuted by his children; Henrietta stated that Lady Hope was not present during Darwin's final illness.

Charles Darwin had a heart attack whilst calling upon a friend in 1881. This was followed by a series more of them and he died at Down House on April 19, 1882. His last words were "I am not in the least afraid to die".

Darwin had a state funeral accompanied by Beethoven's funeral march watched by representatives from all over the world.

Karl Marx considered Darwin had provided the biological basis for communism.

Darwin in Australia is named after the evolution pioneer.

In 1999 one leaf from The Origin of the Species was bought for £45,000 at an auction.

Charles Darwin's pet tortoise Harriet died in 2006.

Sources Encarta Encyclopedia,  Giant Book of Facts & Trivia

Botany

The Ancient Assyrians, Chinese and Egyptians all established botanical gardens in which they grew various plants and herbs for medical purposes.

The noted Greek philosopher and scientist Theophrastus (372-287 BC) is sometimes called the "Father of Botany." He wrote two books, On Odors and An Enquiry into Plants that summarized the knowledge of his time concerning spices and herbs. In the latter Theophrastus made the important fundamental observation that the flower must always precede the fruit, that is, that a fruit is the product of a flower.

Elizabethan botanist John Gerard (1545-1612), penned in 1598 The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. The 1,484 page book is described as the largest single-volume work on plants that has been published in English.

Claude Aubriet is thought to have been the first artist to accompany a botanical expedition travelling to the Middle East in 1700. There he made drawings of historical sites and the region's flora.

A Malva, illustrations by Aubriet for Tournefort's Institutiones

One of the earliest of America's botanists was John Bartram (1699-1777).  He corresponded with the leading botanists and gardeners of Europe and exchanged seeds and plants with them. In 1728 Bartram he purchased land at Kingsessing, near Philadelphia, which he developed into the first botanical garden in the American colonies and where he conducted the first hybridization experiments in America.

The world's oldest extant botanical society is the 'Linnean Society of London', founded on March 28, 1738. It was originally named the 'Theophilo-Britannica Society', but was renamed in 1788 in honor of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and taxonomist who is considered the father of modern botany.

Jeanne Baret (July 27, 1740 – August 5, 1807) was an assistant botanist on Louis Antoine de Bougainville's expedition on the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile in 1766–1769 that explored the Southern Hemisphere. Baret is recognized as the first woman to have completed a voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. Because French naval regulations prohibited female crew members, she spent most of the voyage disguised as a young man, calling herself Jean Baret. She extensively collected and categorized plants during her travels. 

Charles Darwin was a gifted botanist who used his own gardens at Down to great effect. In the last two decades of his life he wrote five botanical books, describing a wide range of observational and experimental work. It included the role of insects on cross-fertilization and the adaptions of climbing plants such as ivy.

The tallest tree in the world is Hyperion, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) located in Redwood National Park in California, United States. It is an estimated 700-800 years old and stands 380.3 feet (115.92 meters) tall. 

The seeds of the castor bean plant contain a toxin called ricin, which is 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. Just a few castor beans can kill an adult human. The castor bean plant is native to Africa, but it is now grown in many parts of the world.

The largest flower in the world is the Rafflesia arnoldii, also known as the corpse flower. It is found in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia. The Rafflesia arnoldii can grow to be over 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter and weigh up to 15 pounds (7 kilograms). 

The raffia palm (Raphia) has the longest leaves in the plant kingdom. Its leaves can reach up to 65 feet (20 meters) in length and 3 meters (9.8 feet) in width. The leaves are pinnate, meaning that they are divided into many smaller leaflets. The leaflets are attached to a central rachis, which is the main stem of the leaf.

Gardenias are the most fragrant flowers in the world. The Gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides) is a shrub with white, waxy flowers. It has a strong, sweet fragrance that can be smelled from a distance.

The fastest growing plant in the world is bamboo; It can grow up to 3 feet per day (100 cms), and some species have been recorded to grow up to 91 centimeters (35 inches) in a single day. Bamboo is a grass, and it grows so quickly because it has a unique vascular system that allows it to transport water and nutrients very efficiently..

Scientists believe that the oldest plants, algae have existed on Earth for at least 2.7 billion years. This is based on the discovery of fossilized cyanobacteria, which are a type of algae, in rocks that are that old.

Ginkgo biloba are the oldest species of plants growing in soil. They grew on Earth millions of years ago and remembers the era of dinosaurs.

Pitcher plants are one of the most dangerous plants because they are carnivorous plants, meaning they eat meat. Pitcher plants have evolved to trap and digest insects and other small animals. They do this by using their modified leaves, which form pitchers that are filled with a liquid that contains digestive enzymes.

An average tree filters up to 40 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.

As of October 2023, scientists have discovered approximately 391,000 species of vascular plants. This includes flowering plants, ferns, conifers, and other seed-bearing plants. The vast majority of undiscovered plant species are thought to be found in tropical rainforests

The sea has got more plant species than dry land.

Water only goes up the roots and stem, food and most nutrients travel both ways.

Sources Europress Encyclopedia,  Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc, Encarta Encyclopedia, Scienceray 

Beagle (ship)

The Beagle was a 242 ton, 10 gun, 90 ft long ship. The vessel, constructed at a cost of £7,803, was launched on May 11, 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames.

The Beagle set sail from Plymouth on May 22, 1826 on her first voyage, under the command of Captain Stokes. The mission was to accompany the larger ship HMS Adventure (380 tons) on a hydrographic survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego,

It's second voyage was Charles Darwin's famous 1831-36 voyage to the Pacific. Darwin took part in the expedition as a self-financing gentleman naturalist and companion to the captain. The Beagle departed from Devonport on December 27, 1831 with 74 on board.

Also on board was an English-born landscape artist Conrad Martens. Below is his painting of HMS Beagle in the seaways of Tierra del Fuego.

Darwin's father strongly opposed Charles going on the voyage as he felt his son's calling was to the Church.

Darwin paid his own way on the trip spending £500pa.

Charles Darwin had been told that the Beagle was expected to sail about the end of September 1831, but fitting out took longer. Repeated Westerly gales caused delays, and forced them to turn back after departing on 10th and 21st of December. Drunkenness at Christmas lost another day. Finally, on the morning of December 27th, the Beagle left its anchorage on the west side of Plymouth Sound.

Darwin was nearly rejected as ship's naturalist on the Beagle because of shape of his nose. The captain, Robert Fitzroy was not certain that anyone with such a broad, squat nose would have the character to survive such an arduous journey.

The Beagle replica in February 2016

Darwin’s job as naturalist aboard the Beagle gave him the opportunity to observe the various geological formations found on different continents and islands along the way, as well as a huge variety of fossils and living organisms. In his geological observations, Darwin was most impressed with the effect that natural forces had on shaping the earth’s surface. 

The HMS Beagle reached the Galápagos Islands on September 15, 1835. The ship landed at Chatham or San Cristobal, the easternmost of the archipelago. Charles Darwin's observations of species of animals and plants (including the giant tortoises) on Galapagos Islands were different to everywhere else and even differed from island to island. The year he spent studying there suggested to him that animals and plants were not replicas created by a heavenly snap of fingers. Darwin's observations during the voyage led to his theory of modification of species.

After returning to England in 1836, Darwin began recording his ideas about changeability of species in his Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species. By 1838 he had arrived at a sketch of a theory of evolution through natural selection. For the next two decades he worked on his theory and other natural history projects. Darwin’s complete theory was published in 1859, in On the Origin of Species.

Robert Fitzroy became one of Darwin's fiercest critics on scriptural grounds. Tragically he later committed suicide for the part he believed he played in undermining the Bible.

Source Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia

John Bartram

John Bartram was born into a Quaker farming family in colonial Darby, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia, on March 23, 1699.  He developed an early interest in botany while growing up on his father's farm.

John Bartram Library of Congress. https://www.historynet.com/

Orphaned at the age of 13,  Bartram taught himself botany, medicine, and surgery when he was not working as an agricultural laborer.

In 1728 he purchased land at Kingsessing, near Philadelphia. Bartram developed it into the first botanical garden in the American colonies and he conducted there the first hybridization experiments in America. 

Over four decades, Bartram made frequent collection expeditions, travelling north to Lake Ontario, then to Florida and the Ohio River in search of plants and natural history specimens for his own botanic garden and for collectors at home and abroad.

He and his botanist son William Bartram are credited with identifying and introducing into cultivation more than 200 of America's native plants.

Bartram's botanical garden was a favorite place of visit for the Founding Fathers, including Benjamin Franklin. The garden is still maintained by the city of Philadelphia as Bartram’s Garden. 

By 1765, Bartram’s international reputation earned him the notice of King George III. The British monarch honored him as King's Botanist for North America with an annual pension of £50, a position he held until his death in 1777

A naturalist as well as a botanist, Bartram described and collected zoological specimens, proposed geological surveys of North American mineral sites, and argued that fossils be investigated scientifically, rather than exploited as curiosities.

His best-known work is Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and other Matters Worthy of Notice, made by Mr. John Bartram in his Travels from Pennsylvania to Onondaga, Oswego, and the Lake Ontario, in Canada (1751).

In 1743 Bartram was one of the co-founders, along with Benjamin Franklin, of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. It supported scientific studies as well as philosophy.   

He was married to Mary Maris from 1723 to her death in 1727.  She bore him two sons, Richard and Isaac. Bartram married Ann Mendenhall (1703–1789) in 1729. They had five boys and four girls together. 

A Quaker, Bartram demonstrated his opposition to the slave trade by freeing his slaves; his outspoken religious opinions caused him to be disowned by his coreligionists in the Society of Friends.

Bartram died on September 22, 1777, just four days before the British invaded Philadelphia. He was buried at the Darby Friends Cemetery in Darby, Pennsylvania. 

Bartramia, a genus of mosses, was named in his honor. 

Sources Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia,  Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999

Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks was born in Argyll Street, Soho, London on February 24, 1743. His parents were William Banks, a rich Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate.

His father died in 1761, and when Banks reached the age of 21, he inherited the large estate of Revesby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, becoming the local squire and magistrate, and dividing his time between Lincolnshire and London.

Because of his wealth, Banks was able to indulge his interest in science; he was a passionate and skillful botanist and this took him on several major expeditions at his own expense.

Sir Joseph Banks, as painted by Joshua Reynolds in 1773

In 1768 Banks learned that the British explorer James Cook planned to sail to the south Pacific in the Endeavour to observe the transit of Venus and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land". He joined the expedition, which lasted three years, with his staff of eight, and returned with a large collection of new specimens to find himself a celebrity.

The voyage was the first to be organized and equipped for biological work, even though the Government's secret plan was political - to secure a territorial advantage over the French.

On board the Endeavour there were 17 sheep, 4 South sea Hogs, an English boar, its sow and a litter of piglets.

Banks' collection and classification of biological specimens as a member of the expedition helped establish botany as an academic discipline.

Banks was the first European to report a description of a kangaroo.

He brought back 1300 new plant species and is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him, Banksia.

It was Banks who suggested the idea that Botany Bay in Australia would form a suitable penal settlement.

Banks did much to establish the Botanic Garden at Kew, which he planned as a major collecting center and source of advice on all aspects of plants.

Banks was invested as a Knight of the Order of the Bath (KB) on July 1, 1795 .

Joseph Banks died on June 19, 1820 in Spring Grove House, Isleworth, London, and was buried at St Leonard's Church, Heston.

Source Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999.