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To mark the retirement in 1999 of Alwyne Wheeler as the Society's Honorary Editor, a fund was established to create an award to facilitate an original contribution to the study of the history of natural history by a person under the age of 30.
The Alwyne Wheeler Bursary, which draws on this fund, supports travel by scholars under the age of 30 to meetings of the Society for the History of Natural History.
The
application form is available for download as an Adobe
Acrobat (PDF) file.
The first Alwyne Wheeler Bursary was awarded in 2002 to Mr Nicolas Robin, a doctoral student at L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He presented a poster paper at the Spring Meeting held in Shrewsbury in April 2002 on the correspondence between the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Mougeot (1776–1858) and British naturalists.
This bursary is awarded annually to support travel to the Society’s Annual General Meeting or other nominated meeting for scholars in a relevant field under the age of thirty. Daniela Bleichmar, a doctoral student at Princeton University, was awarded the 2003 Wheeler Bursary by the Society to facilitate her attendance at the Florence meeting. Ms Bleichmar researches Spanish natural history expeditions in the eighteenth century, emphasising the importance of illustrations as a way of identifying, seizing, translating and transporting colonial nature. Her presentation at the meeting described the enormous pictorial production of the eight Spanish natural history expeditions during the period, devoting most attention to images from the Royal Botanical Expedition to the New Kingdom of Granada (1783–1816), directed by Josi Celestino Mutis, comparing images from two different periods of the expedition, and contrasting them to the Icones Ineditae Mutis collection at the Linnaean Society, 32 images sent to Linnaeus in the 1770s.
Daniela Bleichmar, recipient of the 2003 Alwyne Wheeler Bursary writes:
I am very grateful to the SHNH for awarding me the Alwyne Wheeler Bursary for younger scholars, which allowed me to present my work at the international conference in Florence. Having joined the Society earlier this year, attending the conference provided a wonderful opportunity to meet other members and to begin participating in this community. The cumulative expertise of the attendants, whether presenters or audience members, was extremely impressive; and the diversity of backgrounds represented brought a special richness to the discussions. As an academic historian of science, I don’t often have the opportunity to engage in conversation not only with academics in my or other disciplines but also with curators, scientists, and others approaching the topic of natural history illustrations from multiple directions. For me, these interdisciplinary exchanges were one of the highlights of a conference that was marked by attentive and thoughtful dialogue, both within and outside of meeting times. The excellent paper and poster presentations on Thursday and Saturday were well complemented by the visits to La Specola Museum of Natural History (which houses a magnificent collection of anatomical wax models), the Museums of Geology and Paleontology, the University's Giardino dei Semplici, and the Boboli Gardens. These collections and gardens were one of the many reasons why Florence was a wonderful location for the conference. Other reasons might be less scholarly but not less appreciated, among them the sunshine, excellent food and coffee, amazing gelatti and the beauty of the setting. The success of the conference was largely due to its organisers, who took care of every imaginable detail to make it run as smoothly as it did. It was a wonderful three days, and I believe that many conversations started in Florence will continue.
Daniela Bleichmar
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