When Cynthia Met Evelyn | Entomologists on a Pacific Adventure

This is an in-person event only. There is no live stream. There will be a drinks reception in our library afterwards (7pm to 8pm), with a paid bar available.

In one of the rooms of the Linnean Society, in the afternoon of Wednesday 3 January 1923, the heads of London’s foremost scientific institutions were convened by the entrepreneurial engineer Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, to form a private enterprise, an experiment, the Scientific Expeditionary Research Association, to “facilitate and promote scientific research by means of expeditions to all parts of the world”.

This talk will tell the remarkable but ultimately flawed story of the now forgotten scientific voyage of the St George in the Pacific in 1924-25 from the perspective of Cynthia Longfield and Evelyn Cheesman, two pioneering entomologists on an otherwise all-male vessel, and their scientific practices in a world only grudgingly opening up to women.

Jordan Goodman is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL. He has published extensively in the fields of the history of science, history of medicine, cultural history and economic history. His recent book is Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors – An Adventurous History of Botany (William Collins, 2020). It won the John Thackray Prize for the best natural history book in 2021.

Janet Browne is now retired. She has worked in the UK and USA as a historian of biology, especially Darwinism. She is the author of a biography of Charles Darwin. She is greatly interested in the history of animal and plant collecting, museums, voyages of exploration, garden history, and the science and religion controversies.

Background image credit: By permission of the Royal Irish Academy Ó RIA

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Concessions

Please buy the concession ticket if you are:

• 65 years of age, or over
• Under 26 years of age
• Currently in receipt of UK government benefit (including, but not limited to, Income Based Jobseeker's Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit, and Universal Credit).
• Currently in full-time education.

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This is an in-person event at the Linnean Society of London on Piccadilly, London, only.

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Host or Publisher Linnean Society of London