To have become a naturalist at an early age living in France, with further study and field research in Europe and the United States, it was undoubtedly frustrating to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) to be largely regarded as eccentric despite meticulous field work. Nonetheless, his often unconventional ideas were hard for his professional peers to embrace. More contemporary scientists have come to recognize Rafinesque for his field work and avant-garde thinking.
The field journal he kept in the autumn of 1818 during a trip from Philadelphia to Kentucky is mostly in French and includes sketches of plants, shells, fish, and mammals as well as hand-drawn maps. Please help us transcribe Rafinesque's almost two-hundred year old notes, some of which were made during a week-long stay with John James Audubon.
To have become a naturalist at an early age living in France, with further study and field research in Europe and the United States, it was undoubtedly frustrating to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) to be largely regarded as eccentric despite meticulous field work. Nonetheless, his often unconventional ideas were hard for his professional peers to embrace. More contemporary scientists have come to recognize Rafinesque for his field work and avant-garde thinking.
The field journal he kept in the autumn of 1818 during a trip from Philadelphia to Kentucky is mostly in French and includes sketches of plants, shells, fish, and mammals as well as hand-drawn maps. Please help us transcribe Rafinesque's almost two-hundred year old notes, some of which were made during a week-long stay with John James Audubon.
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) was born near Constantinople, now Istanbul, in Turkey. After living in Marseilles, France for a time, his family fled to Livorno (Leghorn), Italy to escape the French Revolution. Rafinesque showed an early enthusiasm for the study of nature, beginning the systematic collection of a herbarium when he was eleven years old. At 19 years old, he traveled to Philadelphia, where he became acquainted with several American scientists, including Benjamin Rush and William Bartram. Rafinesque's chief interests were botany and ichthyology. During his first three years in America, Rafinesque made several field trips to collect botanical and zoological specimens. He returned to Italy for ten years, studying the ichthyology of Sicilian waters while working as secretary and chancellor to the American Consul. Returning to America in 1815, he settled in New York where he studied the flora and fauna of the Hudson Valley, Lake George, and Long Island. In 1819, Rafinesque was appointed Professor of Botany, Natural History, and Modern Languages at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he remained until 1826. From 1826 until his death, he lived in Philadelphia and continued to make field trips and study the flora and fauna of the region.
Despite a peculiar personality that alienated many colleagues, he contributed significantly to nineteenth century scientific thought. He was one of the first American naturalists to depart from the Linnaean system of classification and adopt the emerging schemes of natural plant classification. Rafinesque was an early advocate of evolutionary theory and his ideas were acknowledged by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species.
