Richard Owen F.R.S. (1804 92) was a controversial and influential palaeontologist and anatomist. Owen studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and at London's St Bartholomew's Hospital. He grew interested in anatomical research, and after qualifying he became assistant conservator in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and then superintendent of natural history in the British Museum. He quickly became an authority on comparative anatomy and palaeontology, coining the term 'dinosaur' and founding the Natural History Museum. He was also a fierce critic of Darwin's theory of...

Richard Owen F.R.S. (1804 92) was a controversial and influential palaeontologist and anatomist. Owen studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and at London's St Bartholomew's Hospital. He grew interested in anatomical research, and after qualifying he became assistant conservator in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and then superintendent of natural history in the British Museum. He quickly became an authority on comparative anatomy and palaeontology, coining the term 'dinosaur' and founding the Natural History Museum. He was also a fierce critic of Darwin's theory of...

A significant limitation on the development of zoology, botany and palaeontology in the mid-nineteenth century was the absence of a centralised collection of specimens. Appointed superintendent of the British Museum's natural history departments in 1859, the distinguished biologist Richard Owen (1804 92) quickly realised the need to make various scattered samples more readily available for study, and began campaigning for a new, national museum with unprecedented space and resources. This book is the text of one of his speeches to the Royal Institution, given in 1861 and first published in...

Julius Sachs (1832 97) was an important and influential German botanist. He attended Charles University in Prague, gaining his doctorate in 1856. After appointments in Dresden, Chemnitz and Bonn, he took a professorship at the University of Freiburg in 1867. A year later he accepted a chair at Wurzburg, where he stayed for the rest of his career. Sachs made important contributions across botanical science, notably in cytology and photosynthesis. He was also largely responsible for the leap in understanding of plant physiology that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. His...

The great French zoologist Lamarck (1744 1829) was best known for his theory of evolution, called 'soft inheritance', whereby organisms pass down acquired characteristics to their offspring. Originally a soldier, Lamarck later studied medicine and biology. His distinguished career included admission to the French Academy of Sciences (1779), and appointments as Royal Botanist (1781) and as professor of zoology at the Musee Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793. Acknowledged as the premier authority on invertebrate zoology, he is credited with coining the term 'invertebrates'. In this 1809...

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 93) was a professor of anatomical pathology at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, and one of the founders of modern neurology. Numerous disorders are named after him, and he was one of the best known doctors in nineteenth-century France. He was the first to describe and name multiple sclerosis, and undertook crucial research into what became known as Parkinson's Disease. He also worked on hysteria, and was one of Freud's teachers. These two volumes of lectures on neurological illnesses, first published in Paris in 1872 3 and 1877, were based on extensive...

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 93) was a professor of anatomical pathology at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, and one of the founders of modern neurology. Numerous disorders are named after him, and he was one of the best known doctors in nineteenth-century France. He was the first to describe and name multiple sclerosis, and undertook crucial research into what became known as Parkinson's Disease. He also worked on hysteria, and was one of Freud's teachers. These two volumes of lectures on neurological illnesses, first published in Paris in 1872 3 and 1877, were based on extensive...

Alphonse de Candolle (1806 93) was a French-Swiss botanist who was an important figure in the study of the origins of plants and the reasons for their geographic distribution. He also created the first Code of Botanical Nomenclature. Despite initially studying law, he took over both the chair of botany at the University of Geneva, and the directorship of Geneva's botanical gardens from his father Augustin de Candolle (1778 1841). He published numerous botanical books, and edited ten volumes of the Prodromus, a seventeen-volume reference text intended to cover the key properties of all known...

This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant...

This world-famous work was begun by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785 1865) in 1837, and the ten volumes reissued here were produced under his authorship until 1854, at which point his son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) continued the work of publication. Hooker's own herbarium, or collection of preserved plant specimens, was so extensive that at one point he stored it in one house and lived in another; it was left to the nation on his death. Each volume contains 100 line drawings of plants, and each is accompanied by a full Latin description, with notes in English on habitat and significant...