All posts tagged with book-of-the-week

Monday, May 28, marked Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz’s 205th birthday. Louis Agassiz was a famous Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, and geologist who made critical advances in the fields of ichthyology and glaciology. During his lifetime, he received the Wollaston medal, was named a member of the Royal Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as the head of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University.

If you didn’t already know, we are in the midst of celebrating Asian-Pacific American Heritage month, which asks us to honor the people, culture, history and biodiversity of a broad region which encompasses the entire Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. This region includes exciting and exotic locales such as Palau, Guam, Fiji, New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Tonga, and Easter Island just to name a few.

Today in 1785, John James Audubon was born. A famous French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter, Audubon is responsible for one of the most celebrated ornithological books ever published, Birds of America. Baron Cuvier praised this work as “the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology.”

There are groundbreaking biodiversity works that most of us are familiar with, including Systema Naturae and On the Origin of Species. Then there are other works that, though just as monumental for their impact on scientific knowledge, are less universally known than others. One such book is Anatomy of Plants, a seventeenth century work by Nehemiah Grew.

When most people think of Theodore Roosevelt, they think of the twenty-sixth President of the United States. Taking office in 1901 at the age of 42 after the assassination of William McKinley, he is the youngest president in American history. As President, Roosevelt is known for his work in the Progressive Movement, completing the Panama Canal, and negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. However, while many remember him as the politician, Theodore Roosevelt was also an accomplished natural historian, touring in Africa and Europe and leading a major expedition to the Amazon jungles.