John Stevens Henslow – författare

John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) was a botanist and geologist. As teacher, mentor and friend to Charles Darwin, it was his introduction that secured for Darwin the post of naturalist on the voyage of the Beagle. While Professor of Botany, Henslow established the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as a resource for teaching and research. Students were encouraged to examine plant specimens carefully, and to record the characteristics of their structures. Henslow would have known how daunting they found the task of becoming proficient with botanical vocabulary, and produced this volume to provide a secure foundation for scientific investigations. This meticulous glossary, originally published as a single volume in 1857 but drawing on contributions he made earlier to issues of The Botanist and Maund's Botanic Garden, is a testament to Henslow's scholarship. It is liberally illustrated with delightful woodcuts that clarify the meaning of selected terms.

Henslow's importance as Darwin's mentor is well established. He recommended Darwin for the post of naturalist on the Beagle and also encouraged him to read Lyell's pivotal geology text (also reissued in this series). While professor of botany at Cambridge, Henslow nurtured independent inquiry and acute observation in his students. These attributes are evident in this liberally illustrated 1835 book, which also reveals the influence of Candolle's Théorie Elémentaire de la Botanique (1813) and Physiologie Végétale (1832). Henslow's book, like his meticulous research papers and his innovative lectures, included focussed investigations on the nature and stability of 'species'. Charles Darwin paid such close attention that he became known as 'the man who walks with Henslow', and Henslow's teachings were to echo through Darwin's writings, from his jottings in notebooks on the Beagle onward. This reissue gives modern readers easy access to the work of this inspirational scientist.

This volume contains five pamphlets which illustrate the world in which Charles Darwin moved in Cambridge, and the slow development of life and earth sciences as subjects of academic study. (Darwin himself was officially following a course of study which would fit him to become an Anglican parson). The first pamphlet (from 1821) is a proposed series of lectures on geology by Adam Sedgwick, who taught Darwin the rudiments of the subject during a tour of north Wales. The next two are botany courses proposed by John Stevens Henslow, the mentor and close friend who first suggested that Darwin should go as naturalist on the Beagle voyage. Henslow read extracts of Darwin's letters to him to a meeting of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and published them at his own expense (the fourth pamphlet). The final pamphlet is an impassioned plea from Henslow for support for a new University Botanic Garden.

John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), a student of Adam Sedgwick, became Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge in 1822. He soon moved to a chair in Botany, and became a teacher and mentor to Charles Darwin. This book on mineralogy was first published in 1823. It was intended to save time in class by providing an easily accessible reference to the composition of various minerals according to the principles of atomic theory, which was then entering the scientific mainstream. In that paradigm, analysis and examination of any mineral's composition involved first ascertaining the mineral's elementary molecules, both 'essential' and 'accidental', and second, determining the proportions in which the essential ingredients combined to form the integrant molecule of the mineral. Henslow's book will interest historians of science tracing the development of atomic theory, and those working more broadly in the history of university education and the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century.

An influential professor of botany at Cambridge, John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) revived his department and helped develop the current University Botanical Garden for study, teaching and conservation. A mentor to the young Darwin, he proved an educational innovator, initiating the study of individual sciences at Cambridge and practical examinations at the University of London. While rector of Hitcham in Suffolk, he took an interest in local politics, welfare and popular education. This led to the publication in 1860 of this catalogue, which collated the observations and work of amateur botanists. Henslow was the overarching academic and technical consultant while Edmund Skepper is credited with organising and collating the information from the contributors. Catalogued taxonomically, each plant's Latin and common name is given along with its physical description, common locations, rarity or commonality, and periods of flowering or germination. It remains a valuable guide for amateur botanists and naturalists.

In 1829, botany had much to prove. A prominent lecturer, John Lindley, noted that 'it has been very much the fashion of late years, in this country, to undervalue the importance of this science, and to consider it an amusement for ladies rather than an occupation for the serious thoughts of man'. In the three documents reissued here, Cambridge botany professor John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) demonstrates the exacting standards of his course. The work contains an 1829 catalogue of British plants, the skeleton structure of sixteen lectures for 1833 and an 1851 list of potential examination questions. Students were expected to differentiate between 'an indefinite and a definite inflorescence', to recognise 'albuminous seeds', and describe 'nectariferous appendages'. With a strongly Linnaean approach to taxonomy, this collection offers researchers a window into the growth of academic botany prior to the revolution occasioned by Stevens' pupil, Charles Darwin.