Gregory's remarkable career and his scientific work are detailed and critically assessed. Accounts of his heroic 1893 expedition to the Rift Valley (a term he coined) in Kenya (now the Gregory Rift), his first crossing of Spitzbergen, and his resignation as Leader of the first British Antarctic Expedition of 1901, when racing to the Pole under Scott became the priority, draw on unpublished letters. While in Melbourne he published on mining geology and a series of geography textbooks. His 1901 Lake Eyre expedition in Central Australia initiated the phrase 'The Dead Heart of Australia' and controversy over the source of artesian water. In the Chair of Geology in Glasgow from 1904, he built up the largest first-year geology class in the UK, over 400 students. He worked in every field of geology and every continent except Antarctica. He was also involved with the search for a 'homeland' for the Jews in Libya and Angola. He shrewdly realized that Wegener's Continental Drift Theory erroneously supposed that the Pacific Ocean was wider than now before the Atlantic opened. This led to his influential rejection of Continental Drift. He drowned in Peru traversing the Andes having published over 30 books and nearly 400 articles.

A kaleidoscopic rethinking of how we come to know the earth. This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world traditions understood human and geological origins? How does the inclusion of multiple cosmologies change the meaning of the Anthropocene and the global climate crisis? By carefully examining these questions, New Earth Histories sets an ambitious agenda for how we think about the earth. The chapters consider debates about the age and structure of the earth, how humans and earth systems interact, and how empire has been conceived in multiple traditions. The methods the authors deploy are diverse—from cultural history and visual and material studies to ethnography, geography, and Indigenous studies—and the effect is to highlight how earth knowledge emerged from historically specific situations. New Earth Histories provides both a framework for studying science at a global scale and fascinating examples to educate as well as inspire future work. Essential reading for students and scholars of earth science history, environmental humanities, history of science and religion, and science and empire.

Anne Troelstra’s fine bibliography is an outstanding and ground-breaking work. He has provided the academic world with a long-needed bibliographical record of human endeavour in the field of the natural sciences. The travel narratives listed here encompass all aspects of the natural world in every part of the globe, but are especially concerned with its fauna, flora and fossil remains. Such eyewitness accounts have always fascinated their readers, but they were never written solely for entertainment: fragmentary though they often are, these narratives of travel and exploration are of immense importance for our scientific understanding of life on earth, providing us with a window on an ever changing, and often vanishing, natural world. Without such records of the past we could not track, document or understand the significance of changes that are so important for the study of zoogeography. With this book Troelstra gives us a superb overview of natural history travel narratives. The well over four thousand detailed entries, ranging over four centuries and all major western European languages, are drawn from a wide range of sources and include both printed books and periodical contributions. While no subject bibliography by a single author can attain absolute completeness, Troelstra’s work is comprehensive to a truly remarkable degree. The entries are arranged alphabetically by author and chronologically, by the year of first publication, under the author’s name. A brief biography, with the scope and range of their work, is given for each author; every title is set in context, the contents – including illustrations – are described and all known editions and translations are cited. In addition, there is a geographical index that cross refers between authors and the regions visited, and a full list of the bibliographical and biographical sources used in compiling the bibliography.

Birkbeck traces the 200-year history of Birkbeck, University of London from its founding at a time when social elites deplored the notion of educated working people to the present day. Joanna Bourke writes a lively history of the institution, and how it contributed to the shaping of modern British higher education. Two hundred years ago, Birkbeck was founded as the London Mechanics' Institution (LMI). When it was established in 1823, one third of all men and half of all women were unable to read or write. British elites were vehemently hostile to educating working people. The country was in political turmoil and it was feared that education would destroy society. This was the context in which the LMI was established. From its foundation, it was unique. Birkbeck traces its history from 1823 to the present, with Joanna Bourke using the history of Birkbeck to reflect on life and culture in London over the past two centuries. What does it mean to be educated? Why have Birkbeck's students been prepared to give up so much in order to study for a higher degree? How does education help us become fully human and self-fulfilled by learning how to use all our faculties - knowledge, imagination, sympathy? The story of Birkbeck contains some blood, oceans of scholarly sweat, and not a few tears. But it is also a story of laughter, intellectual excitement, scholarly eccentricity, collective as well as personal ambition, and, most of all, the quirky passions and personalities that make up the Birkbeck community. It is a story of a unique university but also of higher education of Britain. It shows how knowledge can empower people to better themselves and improve the world.

Scotland's maritime heritage is a highly significant one, embracing as it does a quite outstanding contribution to Britain's development both as an empire and as the world's leading maritime power in the nineteenth century.Scottish engineering, ship-owning and operating, as well as business and entrepreneurial skills, played a major part in the success of the Merchant Navy, while Scottish emigrants took skills to every corner of the world, creating trade and wealth both abroad and at home. In terms of engineering, 'Clyde-built' was the Kitemark for the shipbuilding industry the world over. Scottish shipowners included household names such as Allan, Anchor, Donaldson and Henderson, while Scotsmen were instrumental in founding and, for much of the time, managing Cunard, British India, P & O, Orient, Glen and many other 'English' companies.The author tells an exhilarating story of energy and inventiveness, describing the remarkable navigational skills of the highlanders and the technological and business skills of the lowlanders, and relates the early development of the steamship, the impact of emigration, the involvement with exploration and the development of trade routes, and the final flowering of the world's last great iron sailing ships. And the evidence is still here, in the Cutty Sark, the Denny test tank at Dumbarton, and the Burrell Collection at Pollock, all reminders of a remarkable story.As seen in Scottish Memories Magazine.

This book provides an analytical understanding of some of Tagore’s most contested and celebrated works and ideas. It reflects on his critique of nationalism, aesthetic worldview, and the idea of ‘surplus in man’ underlying his life and works. It discusses the creative notion of surplus that stands not for ‘profit’ or ‘value’, but for celebrating human beings’ continuous quest for reaching out beyond one’s limits. It highlights, among other themes, how the idea of being ‘Indian’ involves stages of evolution through a complex matrix of ideals, values and actions—cultural, historical, literary and ideological. Examining the notion of the ‘universal’, contemporary scholars come together in this volume to show how ‘surplus in man’ is generated over the life of concrete particulars through creativity. The work brings forth a social scientific account of Tagore’s thoughts and critically reconstructs many of his epochal ideas. Lucid in analysis and bolstered with historical reflection, this book will be a major intervention in understanding Tagore’s works and its relevance for the contemporary human and social sciences. It will interest scholars and researchers of philosophy, literature and cultural studies.

This work examines the valley of the Urubamba River in terms of vertical zonation, Incan impact on the environment, plant use, the history of exploration and the notion of discovery, the idea of land reform, and cultural contact with the European world. Winding its path northward from the Andean Highlands to the Amazon, the valley has served as the stage of pre-Columbian civilizations and focal point of Spanish conquest in Peru. "Gade left behind not only a superb body of scholarly work, but a network of colleagues and students who remain indebted to his example. This book should serve as an inspiration for all scholars who wish to pursue the Sauerian, counter enlightenment or post development agendas of understanding and respecting particular places in all their historical and cultural complexity, including ambiguities and contradictions." -- The Geographical Review, American Geographical Society