Category Archives: Natural Historians

Alexander von Humboldt was a natural historian, geographer and explorer who was the first European to travel widely in Central and South America with the intention of describing the flora and fauna of this hitherto unrecorded region. He was also … Continue reading →

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.                                 …–Charles Darwin, 1882 Georges … Continue reading →

William Smith is a remarkable figure in the history of natural science because of the significance of his discoveries and the slow pace of the acceptance of his ideas. He is know known as the “Father of English Geology,” yet … Continue reading →

The external world is all-powerful in alteration of the form of organized bodies . . . these [modifications] are inherited, and they influence all the rest of the organization of the animal, because if these modifications lead to injurious effects, … Continue reading →

I cannot promise to teach you all geology, I can only fire your imaginations. –a comment from Sedgwick’s lecture notes Adam Sedgwick was a Cambridge-educated geologist who reshaped the study of this science by emphasizing research on rock strata and … Continue reading →

From A Memoir of . . . Dr. John D. Godman (Philadelphia, 1859): [His] essays are not inferior in poetical beauty, and vivid and accurate description, to the celebrated letters of Gilbert White on the natural history of Selbourne. He came … Continue reading →

I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and … Continue reading →