The Great Naturalists
Thames & Hudson: 2007
9780500251393
For millennia, people have observed, recorded and documented the living world and attempted to make sense of it. The Great Naturalists (Thames & Hudson, 2007) charts the history of natural history through the lives of 40 such people over the past 2,000 years.
Alongside the expected names — Aristotle, Linnaeus, Darwin — this handsome volume celebrates the lives and works of many lesser-known figures, including Konrad Gessner, the sixteenth-century writer of Historia Animalium and Historia Plantarum, and Mary Anning, who discovered the first plesiosaur.
Four sections — 'The Ancients', 'The Renaissance', 'The Enlightenment' and 'The 19th Century' — all beautifully illustrated, often by the naturalists, show how the desire for striking images collided with the need for accurate documentation. Pictured is Georges Cuvier's giant ground sloth (Megatharium) skeleton.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Meyer, J. Drawing conclusions. Nature 451, 19 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/451019a
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/451019a
This article is cited by
-
Window opened on Alzheimer's conundrum
Nature (2008)