The collaboration of the French naturalist Charles De Gerville with the Sowerby family and its contribution to early nineteenth-century geology

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Cleevely
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Exchange Of Information ◽  
University Of Bristol ◽  
The University

Letters discovered in Normandy between Charles De Gerville (1769–1853), the French archaeologist and naturalist, and members of the Sowerby family concern his investigation of the strata, their fossils and the exchange of information, specimens and publications. Together with other archives at the Natural History Museum, London, the University of Bristol and the Bibliotheque Municipale de Cherbourg, they deal with his research during the early nineteenth century on the geology of the Cotentin (Cherbourg Peninsula). A brief resumé of James Sowerby's early botanical interests is mentioned as the likely link for this relationship. Sowerby's Mineral conchology is believed to have had a major role in influencing De Gerville's research, particularly through its support of John Farey's advocacy of William Smith's methods. These letters, together with references to published accounts about geology at that time, reveal the difficulties under which this research was conducted. An account of De Gerville's early life is given to explain his links with English contemporaries, mention his characteristic qualities, or foibles, and assess the value of his contribution to geology.

scholarly journals 4. On some Congenital Deformities of the Human Skull

1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 444-449
Author(s):  
Wm. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Human Skull ◽  
Congenital Deformities ◽  
Premature Closure ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Living Person

1st, Scaphocephalus.—After making reference to his previous papers, more especially to that in which he had described several specimens of the scaphocephalic skull, in which he had discussed the influence exercised on the production of deformities of the cranium, by a premature closure or obliteration of the sutures, and to the recent memoirs of Professor von Düben of Stockholm,† and Dr John Thurnam, the author proceeded to relate two additional cases of scaphocephalus to those he had already recorded. He had met with one of these in the head of a living person, the other in a skull in the Natural History Museum of the University of Edinburgh.

Nineteenth-century paleontological art in the Natural History Museum Vienna, Austria: Between demystification and mythologization

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel ◽  
Mathias Harzhauser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Science Museums ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Systematic Paleontology

ABSTRACT The nineteenth century was the dawn of scientific and systematic paleontology. The foundation of Natural History Museums—built as microcosmic “Books of Nature”—not only contributed to the establishment of this new discipline but also to its visual dissemination. This paper will take the metaphor of the “book” as a starting point for an examination of the paleontological exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. In keeping with “Natural Theology,” the earliest natural science museums in Britain were designed as expressions of the medieval idea of the “Holy Book of Nature.” Contrary to this, the Natural History Museum Vienna, opened in 1889, wanted to be a nonreligious museum of evolution. Nevertheless, the idea of the “book” was also influential for its design. According to the architects and the first director, it should be a modern “walk-in textbook” instructive for everyone. The most prominent exhibition hall in the museum is dedicated to paleontology. The hall’s decorative scheme forms a unique “Paleo-Gesamtkunstwerk” (Gesamtkunstwerk: total piece of art). The use of grotesque and mythological elements is a particularly striking feature of the hall’s decoration and raises the question of how this relates to the museum’s claim to be a hard-core science institution. As it was paleontology’s task to demystify the monsters and riddles of Earth history systematically, it seems odd that the decorative program connected explicitly to this world. This chapter sheds light on the cultural traditions that led to the creation of this ambiguous program that oscillates between science and imagination.

Ralph Tate, his Natural History Museum at the University of Adelaide and the ‘Tate Museum'

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Kidman
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
The University

Many of Ralph Tate's achievements as the University of Adelaide's foundation Professor of Natural Science arewell known.The focus here is on the quite remarkable, but almost forgotten, natural history museum that he built at the University and that after his death was named the Tate Museum. The paper outlines and explains the difficulties that Tate encountered in establishing the museum, the strictly geological focus of his successors and the gradual dispersal of Tate's main collections.

From sponges to primates: emendation of 30 species nomina dedicated to the Swedish zoologist Einar Lönnberg

Zootaxa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2201 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-68
Author(s):  
STEFAN KOERBER
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
History Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
The University

In 1891 Axel Johan Einar Lönnberg became a Doctor of Science and a Fellow of Zoology at the University of Uppsala. From 1904 to 1933, he served as head of the Vertebrate Department of the Royal Natural History Museum of Stockholm where after his expeditions around the world he worked the collected material himself. Although he was specialized in ornithology and the fauna of his homecountry Sweden, Lönnberg worked on so many different zoological groups “that since the days of Linnaeus hardly anyone has known so much about so many branches in zoology as Lönnberg” (Anonymous 1943). One of his special interests was to educate his Swedish countrymen about their native animals and he accomplished this during many years as editor and multiple author of the journal Fauna och Flora.

scholarly journals Reste eines Elasmosauriers aus der Oberkreide von Schleswig-Holstein in der Sammlung des Naturkunde-Museums Bielefeld

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Sachs
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Caudal Vertebrae ◽  
The University ◽  
Private Collections ◽  
Upper Campanian

In 2016, the Natural History Museum Bielefeld received fragmentary remains of an elasmosaurid plesiosaurian from the upper Campanian of Kronsmoor (Steinburg district) in Schleswig-Holstein (northern Germany). The material includes incomplete vertebrae, phalanges and unidentifiable fragments. Additional parts of the same skeleton (a tooth, cervical-, dorsal- and caudal vertebrae, limb elements and 110 gastroliths) are housed at the Institute for Geology of the University of Hamburg and in private collections.

Edinburgh and Paris

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-155
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Medical School ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Paris was the most important centre for evolutionary speculations in Europe in the early nineteenth century. Two of its most influential evolutionary thinkers, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire both worked there in the city’s Museum of Natural History. This chapter explores the impact of these French thinkers’ theories in Edinburgh and the close connections that existed between natural history circles in the two cities. It was common for students and graduates of the medical school of the University of Edinburgh to spend time studying in Paris, where they imbibed many of the exciting new ideas being discussed there. Two of the key figures discussed in this book, Robert Grant and Robert Knox, had both spent time in Paris and were deeply influenced by the theories they encountered there. The chapter also examines the impact of the key writings of Lamarck and Geoffroy in Edinburgh.

The Reverend Thomas Hincks FRS (1818–1899): taxonomist of Bryozoa and Hydrozoa

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale R. Calder
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Royal Society Of London

Thomas Hincks was born 15 July 1818 in Exeter, England. He attended Manchester New College, York, from 1833 to 1839, and received a B.A. from the University of London in 1840. In 1839 he commenced a 30-year career as a cleric, and served with distinction at Unitarian chapels in Ireland and England. Meanwhile, he enthusiastically pursued interests in natural history. A breakdown in his health and permanent voice impairment during 1867–68 while at Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds, forced him reluctantly to resign from active ministry in 1869. He moved to Taunton and later to Clifton, and devoted much of the rest of his life to natural history. Hincks was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1872 for noteworthy contributions to natural history. Foremost among his publications in science were A history of the British hydroid zoophytes (1868) and A history of the British marine Polyzoa (1880). Hincks named 24 families, 52 genera and 360 species and subspecies of invertebrates, mostly Bryozoa and Hydrozoa. Hincks died 25 January 1899 in Clifton, and was buried in Leeds. His important bryozoan and hydroid collections are in the Natural History Museum, London. At least six genera and 13 species of invertebrates are named in his honour.

THE CATALOG OF THE MINERALOGICAL COLLECTION OF THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD II (1747–1792): COLLECTING AND LEARNING IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNARITA FRANZA ◽  
ROSANNA FABOZZI ◽  
LETIZIA VEZZOSI ◽  
LUCIANA FANTONI ◽  
GIOVANNI PRATESI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Evaluation ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Metal Content ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
The University

ABSTRACT The Collectio Mineralium (1765) currently preserved at the Historical Archive of the Natural History Museum of the University of Firenze, is the unpublished catalog of the mineralogical collection that belonged to Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792). The catalog is a 110-page register, with the golden emblem of the House of Habsburg at the center of the binding, containing information about 242 mineralogical samples. Each specimen is carefully described (i.e., habit, metal content, product value) and its locality given. The interpretation of the text has also returned information on most of the mining deposits in the Austro-Hungarian territories in the eighteenth century. Therefore, the interpretation of this catalog—that on the basis of the literature appears to be the first catalog of a collection belonged to a Habsburg emperor—represents an important step toward enhancing our understanding of Habsburg natural history collections and reflected the transition from wonder-rooms to commodity collecting. Leopold's private collection was no longer an ‘instrument of wonder’ but it became representative of scientific collecting characterized by the establishment of systematic mineralogy, and by a careful economic evaluation of the mineralogical samples collected as a symbol of the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Conodont collections formerly housed at the University of Southampton, U.K.

1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-535
Author(s):  
C. Giles Miller ◽  
Ronald L. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
The University

In 1994 an extensive collection of mainly Carboniferous conodonts was transferred from the Department of Geology, University of Southampton, England, to The Natural History Museum, London, on the retirement of R. L. Austin. The collection consists of approximately 2,000 slides of type/figured specimens and picked residue slides, which complement material previously deposited at The Natural History Museum, London. The following is a very brief resumé of figured material in the collection.

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