Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.
Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage, visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of president of the Royal Society for over 41 years. He advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world's leading botanical garden. He is credited for bringing 30,000 plant specimens home with him; amongst them, he was the first European to document 1,400.
Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and the colonisation of Australia, as well as the establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government on all Australian matters. He is credited with introducing the eucalyptus, acacia, and the genus named after him, Banksia, to the Western world. Around 80 species of plants bear his name. He was the leading founder of the African Association and a member of the Society of Dilettanti, which helped to establish the Royal Academy.
Early life
Banks was born in Argyll Street, Soho, London, the son of William Banks, a wealthy Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate. He was baptised at St James's Church, Piccadilly, on 20 February 1743, Old Style. He had a younger sister, Sarah Sophia Banks, born in 1744.Education
Banks was educated at Harrow School from the age of nine and then at Eton College from 1756; the boys with whom he attended the school included his future shipmate Constantine Phipps.As a boy, Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside and developed a keen interest in nature, history, and botany. When he was 17, he was inoculated with smallpox, but he became ill and did not return to school. In late 1760, he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner at the University of Oxford. At Oxford, he matriculated at Christ Church, where his studies were largely focussed on natural history rather than the classical curriculum. Determined to receive botanical instruction, he paid the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764.
Banks left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763. He continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree. His father had died in 1761, so when Banks reached the age of 21, he inherited the large estate of Revesby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, becoming the local squire and magistrate, and dividing his time between Lincolnshire and London. From his mother's house in Chelsea, he kept up his interest in science by attending the Chelsea Physic Garden of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and the British Museum, where he met the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander. He began to make friends among the scientific men of his day and to correspond with Carl Linnaeus, whom he came to know through Solander. As Banks's influence increased, he became an adviser to King George III and urged the monarch to support voyages of discovery to new lands, hoping to indulge his own interest in botany. He became a Freemason sometime before 1769.
Newfoundland and Labrador
In 1766, Banks was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year, at 23, he went with Phipps aboard the frigate to Newfoundland and Labrador with a view to studying their natural history. He made his name by publishing the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and Labrador. Banks also documented 34 species of birds, including the great auk, which became extinct in 1844. On 7 May, he noted a large number of "penguins" swimming around the ship on the Grand Banks, and a specimen he collected in Chateau Bay, Labrador, was later identified as the great auk.''Endeavour'' voyage
Banks was appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the South Pacific Ocean on HMS Endeavour, 1768–1771. This was the first of James Cook's voyages of discovery in that region. Banks funded eight others to join him: the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, the Finnish naturalist Herman Spöring, artists Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan, and four servants from his estate: James Roberts, Peter Briscoe, Thomas Richmond, and George Dorlton. In 1771, he was travelling with James Cook and docked in Simon's Town in what is now South Africa. There, he met the trader Christoffel Brand and a friendship started. He was the godfather of Brand's grandson Christoffel Brand.The voyage went to Brazil, where Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, Bougainvillea, and to other parts of South America. The voyage then progressed to Tahiti, then to New Zealand.
From there, it proceeded to the east coast of Australia, where Cook mapped the coastline and made landfall at Botany Bay. The ship then landed at Round Hill, which is now known as Seventeen Seventy and at Endeavour River in Queensland, where they spent almost seven weeks ashore while the ship was repaired after becoming holed on the Great Barrier Reef. While they were in Australia, Banks, Daniel Solander, and Finnish botanist Dr Herman Spöring Jr. made the first major collection of Australian flora, describing many species new to science. Almost 800 specimens were illustrated by the artist Sydney Parkinson and appear in Banks' Florilegium, finally published in 35 volumes between 1980 and 1990. Notable also was that during the period when the Endeavour was being repaired, Banks observed a kangaroo, first recorded as "kanguru" on 14 July 1770 in his diary.
File:BotanicMacaroni.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Satire on Banks titled "The Botanic Macaroni", by Matthew Darly, 1772: A macaroni was a pejorative term used for a follower of exaggerated continental fashion in the 18th century.
Return home and voyage to Iceland
Banks arrived back in England on 12 July 1771. He had intended to go with Cook on his second voyage, which began on 13 May 1772, but difficulties arose about Banks's scientific requirements on board Cook's new ship, HMS Resolution. The Admiralty regarded Banks's demands as unacceptable and withdrew his permission to sail. Banks immediately arranged an alternative expedition, and in July 1772, Daniel Solander and he visited the Isle of Wight, the Hebrides, Iceland, and the Orkney Islands, aboard Sir Lawrence. In Iceland, they ascended Mt. Hekla and visited the Great Geyser, and were the first scientific visitors to Staffa in the Inner Hebrides. They returned to London in November, with many botanical specimens, via Edinburgh, where Banks and Solander were interviewed by James Boswell. In 1773, he toured south Wales in the company of artist Paul Sandby.Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Banks settled in London and began work on his Florilegium. He kept in touch with most of the scientists of his time, was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1773. Banks was appointed as an informal director to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew by George III in 1773. Banks sent the first Kew plant hunters around the world, including Francis Masson, Allan Cunningham and James Bowie. Banks was elected to the Dilettante Society in 1774. He was afterwards secretary of this society from 1778 to 1797. On 30 November 1778, he was elected president of the Royal Society, a position he was to hold with great distinction for over 41 years.File:Benjamin West - Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Bt, GCB, PRS - LCNUG 1989.9 - Usher Gallery.jpg|thumb |upright |Portrait of Joseph Banks by Benjamin West in 1772
In March 1779, Banks married Dorothea Hugessen, daughter of W. W. Hugessen, and settled in a large house at 32 Soho Square. It continued to be his London residence for the remainder of his life. There, he welcomed the scientists, students, and authors of his period, and many distinguished foreign visitors. His sister Sarah Sophia Banks lived in the house with Banks and his wife. He had as librarian and curator of his collections Solander, Jonas Carlsson Dryander, and Robert Brown in succession. Also in 1779, Banks took a lease on an estate called Spring Grove, the former residence of Elisha Biscoe, which he eventually bought outright from Biscoe's son, also Elisha, in 1808. Its 34 acres ran along the northern side of the London Road, Isleworth, and contained a natural spring, which was an important attraction to him. Banks spent much time and effort on this secondary home. He steadily created a renowned botanical masterpiece on the estate, achieved primarily with many of the great variety of foreign plants he had collected on his extensive travels around the world, particularly to Australia and the South Seas. The surrounding district became known as Spring Grove. The house was substantially extended and rebuilt by later owners and is now part of West Thames College.
File:Omai, Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Charles Solander by William Parry.jpg|thumb|Sir Joseph Banks, together with Omai and Daniel Solander, painted by William Parry, circa 1775-1776
Banks was made a baronet in 1781, three years after being elected president of the Royal Society. During much of this time, he was an informal adviser to King George III and his position at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew was formalised in 1797. Banks continued to dispatch explorers and botanists to many parts of the world, and through these efforts, Kew Gardens became arguably the pre-eminent botanical garden in the world, with many species being introduced to Europe through them and through Chelsea Physic Garden and their head gardener John Fairbairn. He directly fostered several famous voyages, including that of George Vancouver to the northeastern Pacific, and William Bligh's voyages to transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean islands. Banks was also a major financial supporter of William Smith in his decade-long efforts to create a geological map of England, the first geological map of an entire country. He also chose Allan Cunningham for voyages to Brazil and the north and northwest coasts of Australia to collect specimens.