Abstract:In the history of French geology, Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) is largely figured as the antagonist to Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire, and as the arch-conservative who blocked the path of more ‘Darwinian’ ideas about the evolution of species. If historians mention him as a key player in Catholic French secondary education reform, despite being a Protestant, it is his extraordinarily enlightened encouragement and employment of his daughter, and perhaps even more importantly his step-daughter, in his collaborative pr… Show more
“…If geologists did not venture outside of their normal specialized disciplines to research and write, there is a danger that some of this evidence would be lost. If non-geologists do not see the value of their research within geological science, the evidence would be lost too (Orr 2007). The bringing together of this evidence has allowed new connections to be made and will provide a valuable base on which future work will build.…”
“…If geologists did not venture outside of their normal specialized disciplines to research and write, there is a danger that some of this evidence would be lost. If non-geologists do not see the value of their research within geological science, the evidence would be lost too (Orr 2007). The bringing together of this evidence has allowed new connections to be made and will provide a valuable base on which future work will build.…”
“…19 Anne-Marie Duvaucel converted to become his wife in 1805, the marriage also Women peers in the scientific realm bringing Cuvier an exceptional step-daughter, Sophie, who assisted him in his scientific work. 20 The Lutheran church that the Cuviers attended in Paris engaged in various philanthropic and educational endeavours specifically for young Protestant women in penury. The Cuviers' daughter, Clementine, was one of their teachers.…”
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?
“…11 She describes her eyewitness presence in the laboratories, galleries, preparation and dissecting rooms of the Jardin des Plates, and active work alongside Edward and other French aides naturalistes (paid research staff) on Cuvier's definitive collaborative projects. Women were not unknown among his assistants (Orr, 2007a) since science had no sex for Cuvier. 12 But the Bowdichs had a second and more important mentor for the scientific expedition they envisaged.…”
Section: Contributions To Geology By T E and S Bowdich: Blending Tmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…It is a collection that could herald further research on longer trajectories of women's activities in other sciences. This is because Burek and Higgs locate in concluding introductory remarks what for them distinguishes the collection for as well as in geology: If non‐geologists do not see the value of their research within geological science the evidence would be lost too (Orr, ). The bringing together of this evidence has allowed new connections to be made and will provide a valuable base on which future work will build.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…If non‐geologists do not see the value of their research within geological science the evidence would be lost too (Orr, ). The bringing together of this evidence has allowed new connections to be made and will provide a valuable base on which future work will build.…”
This paper works with the modern concept of the geological hotspot track -the building processes and movements of volcanic island chains -applied strategically to one of its illustrative formations, the Madeira Archipelago. By analogy, however, the concept works equally well to describe the important early 19th-century scientific knowledge-building activity that produced Charles Lyell's On the Geology of Some Parts of Madeira (1854). A central section of the paper uncovers the contributions to knowledge of this geology before Lyell's, and in particular, Excursions of Madeira and Porto Santo (1825) by Mr [sic] T. Edward Bowdich. A thorough examination of this text then constitutes an important case study for literal and figurative investigation of geological hotspot tracks. The main argument proposed is that current specialist research forgets its submerged and longer histories to its detriment. Insights contained in older information often supply reminders of the key questions and contributions from the past that provide checks and balances for further developments of a field. By promoting multi-level, multi-stranded and multi-lingual investigation of the history of 19th-century geology in Madeira before Lyell (1854) as central to hotspot track research, this paper marks nodal conditions that constitute advancement in critical knowledge-building within and outside the discipline of geology.
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