This lecture examines the work of Hugo de Vries, a Dutch botanist who was one of the first to claim that science would allow plants and animals to be designed to order.
It also looks at the early twentieth-century ‘Station for Experimental Evolution’ in New York, and at the utopian vision of Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ Herland (1915), a novel describing a lost world populated by women that took the form of a perfect garden, whose wonderful plants and lack of men were both explained by de Vries’ theory of mutation.
No reservations are required for this lecture. It will be run on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.
Doors will open 30 minutes before the start of the lecture
Jim is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Sussex. He specialises from Victorian natural history to the modern genetics and has presented programmes for BBC Radio 4.
Professor Endersby's lecture series are as follows:
2019/20 Utopian Gardens
All lectures by the Visiting Professor in the History of Science can be accessed here.
Current Visiting Professor of Environment
