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Introduction
Sara Albuquerque is a researcher in History of Science at IHC- FCSH-NOVA-Pólo da Universidade de Évora (February 2019). She worked previously as a post-doctoral researcher at the same research unit (2014-2019), at the Natural History Museum in London (2013) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2007-2012). While at RBG, Kew she obtained a collaborative award and concluded her PhD in History of Science at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2013. She is Honorary Research Associate at RBG, Kew and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. She works in the areas of natural sciences and humanities, with particular interests in history of science, collections of natural history, museology, material culture, botany, economic botany, ethnobotany, gender and world exhibitions.
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Publications
Publications (35)
The ‘Map of Travellers in Africa’ is a nineteenth-century manuscript
produced by Friedrich Welwitsch (1806–1872), an Austrian botanist in
the service of the Portuguese government. The National Museum of
Natural History and Science, Lisbon, Portugal (MUHNAC) holds this
document. It contains the names of travellers who worked in different
parts of th...
This note complements the article "Depicting the Invisible: Welwitsch's Map of Travellers in Africa," published earlier in Earth Sciences History (Albuquerque and Figueirôa 2018). The note contributes additional information concerning previously unknown names on the map that did not appear in the list of explorers in that earlier publication. The n...
The National Museum of Natural History and Science (MUHNAC/Museums of the
University of Lisbon, Portugal) houses a forgotten treasure: part of the scientific and
working library of the Austrian botanist Friedrich Martin Joseph Welwitsch (1806-
1872), known worldwide for his work on Angolan flora. The museum’s collections
began to be reorganized in...
Approaching from an analysis of the work of Robert Brown (1773-1858) and Friedrich Welwitsch (1806–1872) on Rafflesia and Welwitschia, this article explores how the “natural method” became a tool for understanding extra-European flora in the nineteenth century. As botanists worked to detect “hidden affinities” between plants that would enable them...
Balata or bullet tree of Guiana was known as one of the finest forest trees of British Guiana. This paper is based on reports from the 19th and 20th centuries (mainly from George Jenman and Everard im Thurn), publications, newspapers, and correspondence on British Guiana’s balata, a rubber-like material. These references were cross-referenced with...
History, Science and Nature: boundless frontiers...
In 1895, the forty-year old Hannah im Thurn (née Lorimer) embarked on a new life as a colonial wife in the tropics, having just married the explorer and administrator Everard im Thurn. She accompanied her husband on a two-year sojourn in British Guiana, where they lived in Morawahanna, a remote settlement near the Venezuelan frontier. This paper co...
This paper addresses a nineteenth century African manuscript map which has hitherto remained 'invisible'. This manuscript was produced by Friedrich Welwitsch (1806-1872), an Austrian botanist in the service of the Portuguese government, and held by the National Museum of Natural History and Science, University of Lisbon Museums/Museu Nacional de Hi...
The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections. The first phase of this programme was to undertake a series of pilot projects to develop the workflows and infrastructure needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections. This paper presents the results of one of t...
NMH Georeferencing Guidelines
iCollections Transcription Protocol
NMH Georeferencing Guidelines
iCollections Transcription Protocol
La SEHCYT y la UAH, un encuentro después de cuarenta años
El 30 de octubre de 1974 se celebró la Reunión Constituyente de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias (SEHC) y se redactaron y aprobaron sus primeros Estatutos. Poco después se solicitó su admisión en el Registro de Asociaciones del Ministerio de Gobernación, lo que no se logró h...
This paper turns to specific objects, setting them in historical and contemporary context, using both archival sources and information gathered at a trip to Guyana (2010), discussing aspects of Everard im Thurn’s (explorer, botanist, and photographer) collecting practices, and seeking to restore the ‘cross-cultural histories’. I will expose some ex...
Background
The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections . The first phase of this programme has been to undertake a series of pilot projects that will develop the necessary workflows and infrastructure development needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collection...
List of butterfly species in the NHMUK British and Irish Collections
This paper uses the example of the British Guiana Court at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 as a case study to demonstrate how British Guiana (now Guyana) was represented in Britain at the time, by crossreferencing different materials (e.g. objects, correspondence, reports, and newspapers from that period). This exhibition also shows whic...
Plants provide fundamental support systems for life on Earth and are the basis for all terrestrial ecosystems; a decline in plant diversity will be detrimental to all other groups of organisms including humans. Decline in plant diversity has been hard to quantify, due to the huge numbers of known and yet to be discovered species and the lack of an...
Key findings:
• One in five plants are threatened with extinction
• Tropical rainforest contains the highest number of threatened species
• Gymnosperms (the plant group including conifers and cycads) are the most threatened group
• About a third of plants are so poorly known that we still do not know whether or not they are threatened
• The impact...
The Portuguese herbaria LISC (Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical) and LISU (Universidade de Lisboa) hold the best representations of the floras of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands, and a total of over 4,300 types of African plant names. The majority of these types originated from Angola and Mozambique. The family...
Our project within the African Plants Initiative (API) covers two Portuguese Herbaria, LISC (Herbarium of the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical) and LISU (Herbarium of Jardim Botânico, MNHN). At LISU, Welwitsch's African collections hold c. 9400 specimens mainly from Angola. We will present a short biography of Friedrich Welwitsch (1806...
In a collaborative effort between world-renowned scientific
institutions, the Sampled Red List Index for Plants project gives an
accurate view for the first time of how plants are threatened across the
world. It represents the first part of an ongoing project to monitor the status
of the world’s plants.
The background to Friedrich Welwitsch's seven year expedition to Angola and the subsequent fate of his herbarium of 10,000 collections are reviewed. In typifying the approximately 1,000 species names based on his collections, it is important to know where the specimens were at the time of publication of the names. In most cases there are no holotyp...
