Browne, Janet 1950-

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BROWNE, Janet 1950-

PERSONAL: Born 1950. Education: Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College, 24 Eversholt St., London NW1 1AD, England. E-mail—j.browne@ ucl.ac.uk.

CAREER: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College, London, currently professor of the history of biology.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter) Dictionary of the History of Science, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1981.

The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1983.

Ground Cover Plants, Ward, Lock (London, England), 1988.

Roses: A Romantic History with a Guide to Cultivation, Running Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1992.

(Editor, with Frederick Burkhardt, Duncan Porter, and Marsha Richmond) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 8, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Charles Darwin, Alfred Knopf (New York, NY), Volume One: Voyaging, 1995, Volume Two: The Power of Place, 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including Isis, History of Science, Review d'Histoire des Sciences, Intersezioni, British Journal for the History of Science, Health Information and Libraries Journal, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society and Historia, Ciencias, Saude-Manguinhos.

Contributor to books, including Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, 1998, and Cultures of Natural History: From Curiosity to Crisis Cambridge University Press, 1996.

SIDELIGHTS: Trained as a science historian and as a zoologist, Janet Browne's most celebrated work may be her two-volume biography of Charles Darwin. She has also written about the history of botany and the early theories on animal and plant geography. A biology history professor at University College, London, she has also been associate editor of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

Prior to her focus on Darwin, Browne's The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography was published in 1983. She discusses early techniques in organic evolution and species calculation. The book is a history of the theories of biogeography from the seventeenth century until Darwin. Unlike other related books, Browne's history is clear, noted John Hedley Brooke in his London Review of Books review. A Choice reviewer described the book as "a literate, understated contribution to the history of science."

In 1992 Brown wrote Roses: A Romantic History with a Guide to Cultivation. With pictures and drawings on each page, this book details how roses are bred and classified, includes information on rose art and lore as well as recipes for jam and potpourri, and provides advice and tips on how to grow roses.

After a decade-long break from biogeography, Browne returned to the topic of evolution research history. In 1993 she helped edit volume 8 of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. This book covers Darwin's life beginning at age fifty-one, the year after his On the Origin of the Species was published. Through Darwin's correspondence with religious figures, scientists, and other friends, the book leads the reader through his anxieties over his work's reception, and, later, his newfound confidence about his work. It is a combination of scientific lingo and Darwin's emotions, immersed in Victorian life.

Browne launched her own Darwin biography in 1995 with Charles Darwin: Voyaging, the first of a two-volume series. The second volume, The Power of Place, was published in 2002. As Voyaging describes, in his youth Darwin was interested in dogs, horses, bugs, and his family. Born into a wealthy family, he took advantage of this by tapping into the talents of those he knew, in addition to his own. He married his first cousin, Emma, tried the ministry and wandered the countryside studying rocks and insects. Then came his voyage on the Beagle, a naval survey ship, where he traveled to South America. It was, partially, his observations on that trip that led him to his theory of natural selection.

Browne "captures Darwin's wonder and delight, examining his studies of seaweeds and beetles in full scientific and anecdotal detail," noted Sam Pickering in his Sewanee Review piece. George Levine, in a Victorian Studies review of the book, explained that though there are countless biographies of Darwin, Browne's ranks among the most "definitive." Browne, thorough and honest, creates a book that portrays Darwin with a deep understanding of the society he lived within, Levine noted.

Reviewing the second volume of Darwin's life, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Browne begins in 1858 and follows Darwin's struggle to explain his ideas of evolution while plagued by the feeling that his ideas are unoriginal. He published tentatively at first, releasing On the Origin of the Species in 1859 after twenty years of research. As years passed, he continued to vigorously defend his then-radical ideas. An aging scholar with a mysterious advancing illness, Darwin died in 1882. "Readers are left with the image of the sailor returned home to dig in his garden, stare into the past and, in dying, slip into legend," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer of The Power of Place.