Botanist, born in London, UK. He studied at Oxford, and in 1766 made a voyage to Newfoundland collecting plants. He then accompanied James Cook's expedition round the world in the Endeavour (176871). In 1778 he was elected president of the Royal Society, an office he held for 41 years. An important patron of science, he founded the African Association, and the colony of New South Wales owed its origin mainly to him. Through him the bread-fruit was transferred from Tahiti to the West Indies, and the mango was introduced from Bengal, along with many fruits of Ceylon and Persia.
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, PRS (February 13, 1743 – June 19, 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist and science patron. He took part in Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771), and some 75 species bear Banks' name.
Early life
Banks was born in London to the wealthy William William Banks, a prosperous country squire and member of the House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate. When Banks was 17 he was innoculated with smallpox, but he became ill and did not return to school.
He left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763. Banks' father died in 1761, and when he turned 21 Banks inherited a large estate. From his mother's home in Chelsea, he kept up his interest in science by attending the Chelsea Physic Garden of the Society of Apothecaries and the British museum, where he met Daniel Solander, and he began to make friends among the scientific men of his day and to correspond with Carolus Linnaeus, whom he came to know through Solander.
Newfoundland and Labrador
In 1766 he was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year accompanied Phipps to Newfoundland and Labrador with a view of studying their natural history.
Endeavour voyage
He was promptly appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the south Pacific Ocean on HM Bark Endeavour, 1768- 1771. This voyage went to Brazil were Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, bougainvillea (named after Cook's French counterpart, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville) and other parts of South America. It went on to Tahiti (where the transit of Venus was observed, the primary purpose of the mission), New Zealand, and finally to the east coast of Australia where Cook mapped the coastline and made landfall at Botany Bay near present-day Sydney and at Cooktown in Queensland, where they spent almost 7 weeks ashore while their ship was repaired after foundering on the Great Barrier Reef. While in Australia, Banks, and the Swedish and Finnish botanists Daniel Solander and Dr. Herman Spöring made the first major collection of Australian flora, describing many species new to science.
He arrived back in England on 12 July 1771 and immediately became famous. He intended to go with Cook on his second voyage which began on 13 May 1772, but difficulties arose about the accommodation for Banks and his assistants, and he decided not to go. On 30 November 1778 he was elected president of the Royal Society, a position he was to hold with great distinction for over 41 years. His sister Sarah Sophia Banks lived with Banks and his wife.
He was made a baronet in 1781, three years after being elected president of the Royal Society. During much of this time, Banks was an informal adviser to King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a position that was formalized in 1797. Banks dispatched explorers and botanists to many parts of the world; He was directly responsible for several famous voyages, including that of George Vancouver to the Pacific Northwest of North America, and William Bligh's voyages to transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean Sea islands; Banks was also major financial supporter of William Smith in his decade-long efforts to create a geological map of England, the first geological map of an entire country in history.
It was the time in Australia, however, which was to lead to Banks' interest in the British colonization of that continent. He was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales, as is hinted by its early colloquial name: Botany Bay. In 1789 Banks, giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, had stated that in his opinion the place most eligible for the reception of convicts "was Botany Bay, on the coast of New Holland". He arranged that a large number of useful trees and plants should be sent out in the supply ship Guardian which, however, was unfortunately wrecked, and every vessel that came from New South Wales brought plants or animals or geological and other specimens to Banks. He was continually called on for help in developing the agriculture and trade of the colony, and his influence was used in connexion with the sending out of early free settlers one of whom, a young gardener George Suttor, afterwards wrote a memoir of Banks.
Banks's health began to fail early in the nineteenth century and he suffered much from gout every winter. Lady Banks survived him but there were no children.
Legacy
Banks' impact on history was as a systematizer par excellence, very much in step with his times. As befits someone with such a role in opening the South Pacific to Europe, his name dots the map of the region: Banks Peninsula on South Island, New Zealand, the Banks Islands in modern-day Vanuatu and Banks Island in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
The Canberra suburb of Banks and the Sydney suburb of Bankstown are named after him.
Bibliography
An excellent and finely detailed biography of Banks was written by Patrick O'Brian. O'Brian based his characters Joseph Blaine and Stephen Maturin both to some extent on Banks (in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels). Joseph Banks: A Life. A short book about the exploits of Joseph Banks and his relationship with Carl Linneaus Gascoigne, John, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994. Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, The British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution. Cambridge University Press. (cloth) Lysaght, Dr. Averil M., Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766. Consolidation of Banks diaries and other writings while in Newfoundland. Kryza, Frank T., "The Race to Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold" Banks hand in the exploration of Africa.
User Comments Add a comment…