Category Archives: Natural Historians

Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was the French naturalist perhaps most responsuble for the rise of European interest in natural history during the eighteenth century. His massive Histoire naturelle (36 volumes) set out to organize all that was then … Continue reading →

Without Gilbert White, natural history would not have developed as it has over the past two centuries. The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne became the first widely distributed, and most widely read, work in English on the subject. Educated … Continue reading →

Oliver Goldsmith’s An History of the Earth and Animated Nature has been described as everything from “hackwork” to his “most substantial literary legacy” (Wardle, 1957). The first edition (in eight volumes) appeared in London in 1774. The work sought to … Continue reading →

Jennifer Lindbeck, Class of ’98, Dickinson College   Joseph Priestley, best known for his work as a chemist and for his discovery of oxygen, was born on March 13, 1733. He received his early education from Bately Grammar School and … Continue reading →

William Bartram had perhaps as much direct impact on the Romantic poets as any other eighteenth-century naturalist. His influence is evident in works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dorothy Wordsworth, Shelley and others. His Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East … Continue reading →

[Left: Rembrandt Peale’s 1805 portrait (copy by Joanna Neroda)]   Thomas Jefferson is not thought of first and foremost as a natural historian, but his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) proved to be an important source for European and … Continue reading →

William Paley was the originator of the theory now known as “creationism,” the idea that the world as we experience it was created by the Judeo-Christian God in an act of divine fiat, and act which is described in detail … Continue reading →

[N]ature has in favorable times, places, and climates multiplied her first germs of animality, given place to developments of their organizations, [. . .] and increased and diversified their organs. Then [. . ] aided by much time and by a slow but … Continue reading →