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Darwin Correspondence Project
The British naturalist Charles Darwin corresponded with his extended family and with an extraordinarily wide range of people from all over the world. The letters, over 15,000 in all, provide many insights on issues ranging from the origins of key scientific concepts, to religious and philosophical discussions which have continued to the present day. The letters also illuminate many aspects of Darwin and his biography: the development of his ideas; insights into character and health; and private opinions on controversial issues. His letters to the Harvard botanist Asa Gray, for example, show his opinions on slavery and the American Civil War. Darwin relied upon correspondence for much of his scientific work, and also used letters to marshal support for his ideas amongst friends and colleagues. The historian of science Janet Browne has argued that Darwin's ability to correspond daily played a crucial role in the development of his theory and his ability to garner support for it f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University of Cambridge's Christ's Col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lydia Becker
Lydia Ernestine Becker (24 February 1827 – 18 July 1890) was a leader in the early British suffrage movement, as well as an amateur scientist with interests in biology and astronomy. She established Manchester as a centre for the suffrage movement and with Richard Pankhurst she arranged for the first woman to vote in a British election and a court case was unsuccessfully brought to exploit the precedent. Becker is also remembered for founding and publishing the ''Women's Suffrage Journal'' between 1870 and 1890. Biography Born in Cooper Street, Manchester, the oldest daughter of Hannibal Becker, whose father, Ernst Becker had emigrated from Ohrdruf in Thuringia. Becker was educated at home, like many girls at the time. Intellectually curious, she studied botany and astronomy from the 1850s onwards, winning a gold medal for an 1862 scholarly paper on horticulture. An uncle, rather than her parents, encouraged this interest. Five years later, she founded the Ladies' Literary Soc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franciscus Donders
Franciscus (Franz) Cornelius Donders FRS FRSE (27 May 1818 – 24 March 1889) was a Dutch ophthalmologist. During his career, he was a professor of physiology in Utrecht, and was internationally regarded as an authority on eye diseases, directing the Netherlands Hospital for Eye Patients. Along with Graefe and Helmholtz, he was one of the primary founders of scientific ophthalmology. Life He was born in Tilburg, the son of Jan Franz Donders and Agnes Elizabeth Hegh. He was educated at Duizel School and seminaries in both Tilburg and Boxmeer. By the age of seventeen, Franciscus Donders had started studying medicine in the School of Military in Utrecht. It was here that he discovered his passion for experimental study, specifically in the field of chemistry. By the age of twenty-two he entered the junior military in order to become a surgeon For several years, the young Donders studied at the Royal Dutch Hospital for Military Medicine in Utrecht, then earning his M.D. in 1840 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Dohrn
Felix Anton Dohrn FRS FRSE (29 December 1840 – 26 September 1909) was a prominent German Darwinist and the founder and first director of the first zoological research station in the world, the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy. He worked on embryology and examined vertebrate origins in terms of functional phylogeny and proposed a principle of succession of functions in 1875 on how one organ could become the basis for the evolution of another of an entirely different function. Family history Dohrn was born in Stettin (Szczecin), Prussian Province of Pomerania, into a wealthy middle-class family. His grandfather, Heinrich Dohrn, had been a wine and spice merchant, and had made the family fortune by trading in sugar. This wealth allowed Anton's father, Carl August, to devote himself to his various hobbies; travelling, folk music and insects. Anton, the youngest son, read zoology and medicine at various German universities (Königsberg, Bonn, Jena and Berlin). His br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Davidson (palaeontologist)
Thomas Davidson (17 May 181714 October 1885) was a British palaeontologist. Biography He was born in Edinburgh. His parents possessed considerable landed property in Midlothian. Educated partly in the University of Edinburgh and partly in France, Italy and Switzerland, and early acquiring an interest in natural history, he benefited greatly by acquaintance with foreign languages and literature, and with men of science in different countries. He was induced in 1837, through the influence of Leopold von Buch, to devote his special attention to the brachiopoda, and in course of time he became the highest authority on this group. The great task of his life was the ''Monograph of British Fossil Brachiopoda'', published by the Palaeontographical Society (1850–1886). This work, with supplements, comprises six quarto volumes with more than 200 plates drawn on stone by the author. He also prepared an exhaustive memoir on ''Recent Brachiopoda'', published by the Linnean Society. He m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson's paper in ''Nature'' in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term " central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Power Cobbe
Frances Power Cobbe (4 December 1822 – 5 April 1904) was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, religious thinker, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading women's suffrage campaigner. She founded a number of animal advocacy groups, including the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) in 1875 and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in 1898, and was a member of the executive council of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage. She was the author of a large number of books and essays, including ''An Essay on Intuitive Morals'' (1855), ''The Pursuits of Women'' (1863), ''Cities of the Past'' (1864), ''Essays New and Old on Ethical and Social Subjects'' (1865), ''Darwinism in Morals, and other Essays'' (1872), ''The Hopes of the Human Race'' (1874), ''The Duties of Women'' (1881), ''The Peak in Darien, with some other Inquiries touching concerns of the Soul and the Body'' (1882), ''The Scientific Spirit of the Age'' (1888) and ''The Mod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Benjamin Carpenter
William Benjamin Carpenter CB FRS (29 October 1813 – 19 November 1885) was an English physician, invertebrate zoologist and physiologist. He was instrumental in the early stages of the unified University of London. Life Carpenter was born on 29 October 1813 in Exeter, the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter and his wife, Anna Carpenter (née Penn). His father was an important Unitarian preacher who, according to Adrian Desmond, influenced a "rising generation of Unitarian intellectuals, including James Martineau and the ''Westminster Reviews John Bowring." From his father, Carpenter learned to believe in the essential lawfulness of creation and that explanations of the world were to be found in physical causes. He embraced this "naturalistic cosmogony" as his starting point. Carpenter was apprenticed in 1828 to the eye surgeon John Bishop Estlin, who was also the son of a Unitarian minister. He attended lectures at Bristol Medical School, later studied at University College ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyrame De Candolle
Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus (or Pyrame) de Candolle (28 October 18064 April 1893) was a French-Swiss botanist, the son of the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. Biography De Candolle, son of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, first devoted himself to the study of law, but gradually drifted to botany and finally succeeded to his father's chair at the University of Geneva. He published a number of botanical works, including continuations of the ''Prodromus'' in collaboration with his son, Casimir de Candolle. Among his other contributions is the formulation, based on his father's work for the ''Prodromus'', of the first Laws of Botanical Nomenclature, which was adopted by the International Botanical Congress in 1867, and was the prototype of the current ICN. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1859 and was awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London in 1889. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Burdon-Sanderson
Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, 1st Baronet, FRS, HFRSE D.Sc. (21 December 182823 November 1905) was an English physiologist born near Newcastle upon Tyne, and a member of a well known Northumbrian family. Biography He was born at Jesmond near Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 21 December 1828 the son of Richard Burdon (1791-1865) and his wife Elizabeth Sanderson. His maternal grandfather was Sir James Sanderson, 1st Baronet. His paternal grandfather was Sir Thomas Burdon. He received his medical education at the University of Edinburgh with the thesis ''"On the metamorphoses of the coloured corpuscles in extravasated blood"'' and at Paris. Settling in London, he became Medical Officer of Health for Paddington in 1856 and four years later physician to the Middlesex Hospital and the Brompton Consumption hospitals. When diphtheria appeared in England in 1858 he was sent to investigate the disease at the different points of outbreak, and in subsequent years he carried out a number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Georg Bronn
Heinrich Georg Bronn (3 March 1800 – 5 July 1862) was a German geologist and paleontologist. He was the first to translate Charles Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species'' into German in 1860, although not without introducing his own interpretations, as also a chapter critiquing the work. Bibliography Bronn was born at Ziegelhausen (now part of Heidelberg) in the electoral Palatinate. Studying at the university of Heidelberg he took his doctor's degree in the faculty of medicine in 1821, and in the following year was appointed professor of natural history. He now devoted himself to palaeontological studies, and to field-work in various parts of Germany, Italy and France. From its commencement in 1830 to 1862 he assisted in editing the ''Jahrbuch für Mineralogie'' continued as ''Neues Jahrbuch''. His principal work, ''Letkaea Geognostica'' (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1834–1838; 3rd ed. with F. Romer, 3 vols., 1851–1856), has been regarded as one of the foundations of German strati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Boole
Mary Everest Boole (11 March 1832 in Wickwar, Gloucestershire – 17 May 1916 in Middlesex, England) was a self-taught mathematician who is best known as an author of didactic works on mathematics, such as ''Philosophy and Fun of Algebra'', and as the wife of fellow mathematician George Boole. Her progressive ideas on education, as expounded in ''The Preparation of the Child for Science'', included encouraging children to explore mathematics through playful activities such as curve stitching. Her life is of interest to feminists as an example of how women made careers in an academic system that did not welcome them. Life She was born in England, the daughter of Reverend Thomas Roupell Everest, Rector of Wickwar, and Mary ''nee'' Ryall. Her uncle was George Everest, the surveyor and geographer after whom Mount Everest was named. She spent the first part of her life in France where she received an education in mathematics from a private tutor. On returning to England at the age ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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