Publications
“Natural history as stamp collecting,” Archives of Natural History. Volume 35, 2008.
“Ernst Mayr, Karl Jordan, and the history of systematics,” History of Science 48 (2005): 1-35
“The correspondence of the Tring Museum at the Natural History Museum, London,” Mendel Newsletter 14(2005): 2.
“Type-specimens of birds as sources for the history of ornithology,” Journal of the History of Collections 17(2005):173-188.
“The Ibis: transformations in a twentieth century British natural history journal,” Journal of the History of Biology 37 (2004): 515-555.
“The tailend of the moth: clarifying species boundaries,” Endeavour 28 (2004): 161-166.
“Bird fanciers and biology,” Essay review of Tim Birkhead, A brand-new bird: how two amateur scientists created the first genetically engineered animal, in Endeavour 28(2004): 92.
Various book reviews in The Ibis, Journal of the History of Biology, Trends in Ecology and Evolution and the British Journal for the History of Science.
In press
“The return of the geneticist: Theodosius Dobzhansky and museum taxonomy,” Paul Farber Festschrift. Accepted October, 2004.
In progress
Book manuscript
“The Species Maker: Karl Jordan and the Naturalist Tradition.”
Articles
“Natural History” Encyclopedia of the Life Sciences
“The rise of the Phoenix: the 1963 International Congress of Zoology”
“Organizing entomologists: international congresses and the fate of natural history”
“John Buxton and David Lack: establishing the proper method of the
naturalist”
My research focuses on the history of the life sciences, especially the naturalist tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries. The naturalist tradition encompasses a broad range of disciplines that focus on the study of living organisms through naming, classifying, and explaining biodiversity. The naturalist tradition can be thought of as the historical tradition from which the modern, inter-related disciplines of ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation biology developed. I examine how changes in the intellectual, political and cultural environments in which naturalists work have influenced their research, institutions, and relations with society. This history helps us understand the current status, problems, and successes of the life sciences, particularly as biologists endeavor to adapt disciplines founded in very distinct historical contexts to modern concerns, such as biodiversity conservation.
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