scholarly journals Women peers in the scientific realm: Sarah Bowdich (Lee)'s expert collaborations with Georges Cuvier, 1825–33

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Orr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Early Death ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Century Science

The accepted rule for women contributing to nineteenth-century science before 1851 was that they could play only secondary roles in its production and authorship—as translators, illustrators, popularizers—and these by virtue of kinship or marriage to eminent scientists in the field or the laboratory. Sarah Bowdich (Lee) (1791–1856) presents an important amendment to this rule. As an explorer of West Africa on an equal scientific footing with her husband, and then a writer of science independently after his early death, she had other key roles as Georges Cuvier's cross-Channel scientific collaborator and as his first biographer. This article investigates and reframes Sarah's many individual achievements in science and its writing, to examine the larger questions of her case. How were her publications and ‘uneasy career’ in science possible? Can research on women in science today find inspiration in her example?

‘Shattering’ and ‘Violent’ Forces: Gender, Ecology, and Catastrophe in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-57
Author(s):  
Barbara Barrow
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Oliver Goldsmith ◽  
Human Presence ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Natural Catastrophe ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Mill On The Floss ◽  
Planetary Processes

This article argues that George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860) aligns natural catastrophe with the image of the disastrous female body in order to challenge contemporary geological readings of nature as a balanced, self-regulating domain. Both incorporating and revising the work of Charles Lyell, Oliver Goldsmith, and Georges Cuvier, Eliot emphasises the interconnectedness of human and planetary processes, feminises environmental catastrophe, and blends human and ecological history. She does so in order to write the human presence back into geological histories that tended to evacuate the human, and to invite readers to account for the effects their lifestyles and industries have upon the supposedly balanced and orderly processes of nature.

scholarly journals Georges Cuvier en España. La traducción de José Garriga y Baucís de Lecciones elementales de la historia natural de los animales

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (24) ◽  
pp. 309
Author(s):  
Matteo De Beni
Keyword(s):  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Historia Natural

El presente trabajo pretende analizar la versión española realizada por José Garriga y Baucís de Tableau élémentaire de l’histoire naturelle des animaux (1797- 1798) de Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), promotor de la paleontología y de la anatomía comparada. La traducción en cuestión, publicada en 1834 en Valencia por el taller de Cabrerizo, es una muestra señera de la llegada a España de obras de Cuvier, entre cuyas contribuciones al desarrollo de la biología y la anatomía cabe precisamente la descripción –basada en criterios estructuralistas– del reino animal. En el artículo se pone el foco tanto en aspectos que vinculan el texto estudiado con su “historia externa” –en particular, su intención didáctica en el cuadro de las disposiciones vigentes en la enseñanza reglada de la época– como en la confrontación entre la obra de Cuvier y su traducción española, lo cual permite evidenciar las peculiaridades de esta última con respecto al original y hacer hincapié en las elecciones léxicas y en la sensibilidad lingüística del traductor, quien, en la “Advertencia” que incorpora a su versión del tratado, pone de manifiesto la importancia de tener una terminología científica en español y su decisión de asignar “terminación castellana” a las voces especializadas.

Controversial Final Years

2019 ◽  
pp. 451-478
Author(s):  
Stanley Finger
Keyword(s):  
Brain Damage ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Cerebral Hemorrhage ◽  
Anterior Part ◽  
Brain Lesion ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Cortical Localization ◽  
The Brain

Gall remained a controversial figure throughout his life, which ended in Paris in 1828. In his later years, he continued to fight with Georges Cuvier, who had overseen the rejection of his and Spurzheim’s Mémoire to the Institut National in 1808, and with Cuvier’s protégé, physiologist Pierre Flourens. Flourens initially looked favorably on Gall’s doctrine, but during the 1820s his brain lesion experiments on birds and other animals were heralded by the French élite as strong evidence against cortical localization of function. Despite this formidable opposition, Gall did find a supporter of localization of function in physician Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud, who started reporting in 1825 that lesions of the anterior part of the brain are more likely to affect speech than posterior brain damage. Gall’s health began to fail a year later, when he was 68 and began to have strokes. After he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage in 1828, his body was buried in Paris’ Cimetiére du Pére-Lachaise, but not his skull, which was examined by his followers and added to his collection. Gall’s organologie, now regarded as phrénologie, now began an even steeper decline in France and throughout the Continent, although “popular phrenology,” with less emphasis on the underlying science, continued to be influential on British and American landscapes.

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