Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider: How Scientific Names Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes, and Even a Few Scoundrels

by Stephen Heard, Konstantin Rybakov (Translator)

Overview

In his compelling, engagingly written book, Stephen Hurd tells the amazing, highly instructive, and sometimes scandalous stories that underlie taxonomic nomenclature. Ever since the 18th century the binomial system of scientific names of Carl Linnaeus was adopted, scientists often assigned the names of those whom they wanted to glorify or discredit to species of animals and plants. Some of the scientists resolved their ideological differences by exchanging unpleasant names, while others gave flowers or beautiful jellyfish the names of their secret lovers. Thanks to these names, we preserve the memory of little-known ascetic scientists, travelers and simply brave people, without whom many discoveries in biology would not have been possible. Scientific names can tell us a lot about both those to whom they are dedicated and about their authors - their worldview, passions and weaknesses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9785001395904
Publisher:	Alpina Non Fiction
Publication date:	01/13/2023
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	290
File size:	4 MB
Language:	Russian