Profession: naturalist

Engelmann, Agassiz and Braun were student friends in Heidelberg. Schimper, with his close friend Agassiz and Braun, then studied further in Munich, spending regular evenings with their teachers Martius and Oken in congenial discussion; Schimper was also Schelling’s favourite student. The story of Schimper’s and Agassiz’s competing claims to primacy in the theory of glaciation is complex, but Schimper had already lectured on the subject before going to stay with Charpentier in the Alps, finding Agassiz already there, and sharing his ideas with him. Agassiz published, but Braun reasserted Schimper’s right to the real credit.

Brewer collaborated with Baird and Ridgway on a monumental study of North American birds. He had been a close friend of Audubon, who acknowledged his input in Birds of America. Henry was a correspondent.

The young Baird struck up a correspondence with Audubon, sending details of two previously unknown birds, and receiving a large part of Audubon’s collection of stuffed birds in return. Agassiz and Brewer were among those Baird wrote to in order to extend his contacts. Baird knew Leconte, and worked with Henry at the nascent Smithsonian Institution, following him as director.

Darwin’s brother introduced Babbage. Edmonstone, a freed slave, taught him taxidermy and talked of the tropics. Grant and Henslow were influential tutors. He worked with Sedgwick before joining FitzRoy on the Beagle, and visited Herschel in Cape Town; Owen and Gould helped establish the status of material he brought back from that voyage. Lyell, Haeckel and Gray championed Darwin’s ideas, and his close friend Huxley publicly defended him; Agassiz opposed Darwinism, but sent a crate of barnacles from America to aid his research. Though Humboldt respected him greatly, Darwin could hardly get a word in edgeways.