School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemScience by correspondence : Ferdinand Mueller and botany in nineteenth century Australia( 2005)Ferdinand Mueller first used correspondence to undertake projects in botany while working as an apprentice pharmacist in Schleswig-Holstein in the 1840s. In so doing he had before him the examples of illustrious scientific travellers like Darwin and Humboldt who collected data on their own and with help of others on a grand scale. Mueller made his own journey of exploration to Australia in 1847, but after being appointed first Government Botanist in the colony of Victoria in 1853, and first Director of the Melbourne Botanic Garden in 1857, he did not return to Europe. This meant that he was somewhat less reliant than Darwin or Humboldt on correspondence to build up a network of collectors, most of whom were based in Australia, but much more reliant on correspondence to communicate with colleagues, most of whom were based in Europe. One of Mueller's first large data-collecting projects in Australia was a flora, based in phytography, and a second was the introduction of alien plants, based mainly in economic botany, but also concerning phytogeography and acclimatisation. A decade after his arrival in Australia, Mueller was still less well-equipped to write a flora than his most obvious colleagues at the Kew Botanic Garden in England, but he did not have far to catch up. He also managed to build up a network of contacts who sent him alien plants on a large scale, especially compared to another Australian botanic garden director, Richard Schornburgk. Nevertheless, disagreements between these colleagues, especially about identifying and delimiting species, marred the progress of their co-operation. The Kew botanists ended up asking one of their own group, George Bentham, to write the flora of Australia. In addition, Mueller and Schomburgk were both unsuccessful in diversifying the plants grown in local agricultural and horticultural industries. Despite these disappointments, in phytography Mueller went on to publish descriptions of thousands of new Australian species, and to promulgate his own version of the natural system of classification in a series of censuses and iconographs. He also issued a much reprinted volume on economic botany called Select extratropical plants, and developed insights about the relationship between culture and nature that can be regarded as among the first contributions to environmental science. For these and other achievements he was regarded as one of Australia's foremost scientists in the nineteenth century, but he felt that his reliance on correspondence contributed to his work being less well-appreciated overseas. He was able to gain international notice and honours for his achievements but he felt that to do so he was obliged to push his work more insistently than colleagues who could meet each other in person.
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