Old Hooker

Site Information

This site is run on an entirely non-profit basis, for the information of anyone interested in Hooker, the history of botany and related matters. I am very open to suggestions for ways I might improve it. All the information on this site is copyright and must not be used, duplicated, or cited without permission from Jim Endersby, or – in the case of material where someone else holds the copyright – from the copyright holder.

Nerds only!

There are some technical details here about the site, the number of visitors it receives, the generous folk who host it, the software used to create and run it, etc, etc.

Jim Endersby

Here are a few details about who I am and what I do.

What am I doing now?

  • I am now in the third year of a research fellowship at Darwin College, Cambridge, during which I will be writing a book on Hooker and pursuing a new project on the history of the life sciences.
  • I teach the history of biology in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University.
  • I’ve recently signed a contract with William Heinemann to write two books for a general audience (there are more details on my publications page).
  • In 2002, I finished my PhD thesis Putting Plants in their Place: Joseph Hooker’s Philosophical Botany, 1838–65, (Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University).

General research interests:

  • History of botany, especially nineteenth century.
  • Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1913).
  • History of taxonomy and classification.
  • History of the life sciences more generally, especially natural history museums and botanic gardens.
  • Darwin, evolution and related issues.
  • Development of the twentieth-century modern evolutionary synthesis.

Publications

  • The most recent was a review of Frank N. Egerton’s Hewett Cottrell Watson: Victorian plant ecologist and evolutionist, in the Journal of the History of Biology, 37: 393–395.
  • There’s a list here of my past and forthcoming publications.

A long time ago…

… (and in a country far, far away) I used to be a graphic (and web) designer. If you’d like to email me, please do!