The Challenger expedition of 1872–1876 was a scientific programme that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the naval vessel that undertook the trip, HMS Challenger.
John Gould was an English ornithologist who published monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Matthew Hart. He has been considered the father of bird study in Australia and the Gould League in Australia is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould's work is referenced in Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species.
Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university-educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.
George Robert Waterhouse was an English naturalist. He was a keeper at the department of geology and later curator of the Zoological Society of London's museum.
Thomas Hornsey Bell FRS FLS was an English zoologist, dental surgeon and writer, born in Poole, Dorset, England.
Achille Guenée was a French lawyer and entomologist.
Arthur Adams was an English physician and naturalist.
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.
Edgar Albert Smith was a British zoologist, a malacologist.
Gaspard Auguste Brullé was a French entomologist.
Roger Heim was a French botanist specialising in mycology and tropical phytopathology. He was known for his studies describing the anatomy of the mushroom hymenium, the systematics and phylogeny of higher fungi, the mycology of tropical fungi such as Termitomyces, as well as ethnomycological work on hallucinogenic fungi, like Psilocybe and Stropharia. In his career, he published over 560 articles, scientific reviews, and major works in fields like botany, chemistry, education, forestry, horticulture, liberal arts, medicine and zoology.
Simon Suzanne Nérée Boubée, known professionally as Nérée Boubée (1806–1862) was a French naturalist, entomologist, geologist, author, and educator at the University of Paris, and a member of the Société entomologique de France.
HMS Ferret was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by Benjamin Tanner at Dartmouth and launched in 1806, 19 months late. She served on the Jamaica, Halifax, and Leith stations during which time she took three privateers as prizes before she was wrecked in 1813.
Edward John Miers FZS FLS was a British zoologist and curator of the crustacean collection at the Natural History Museum in London. He contributed to the scientific reports from the Challenger expedition of 1872–1876, and described 32 new genera and at least 260 new species and subspecies of decapod crustaceans, along with four genera and 72 new species in other orders.
Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. was an American entomologist. Dyar's Law, a pattern of geometric progression in the growth of insect parts, is named after him. He was also noted for eccentric pursuits which included digging tunnels under his home. He had a complicated personal life and along with his second wife he adopted the Baháʼí Faith.
Biospeleology, also known as cave biology, is a branch of biology dedicated to the study of organisms that live in caves and are collectively referred to as troglofauna.
Richard Brinsley Hinds FRCS was a British naval surgeon, botanist and malacologist. He sailed on the 1835–42 voyage by HMS Sulphur to explore the Pacific Ocean, and edited the natural history reports of that expedition.
Vice admiral William Usborne Moore also known as W. Usborne Moore was a British naval commander, psychical researcher and spiritualist.
HMS Ulysses was a 48-gun Roebuck-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy during the American Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars. Commissioned in 1779, her principal active service was in the Caribbean, interspersed with periods as a troopship and storeship. She was decommissioned and sold at Sheerness Dockyard in 1815.
Captain Guybon Chesney Castell Damant was a British royal navy officer known for his scientific research on preventing decompression illness with John Scott Haldane, his leadership over a team of divers that salvaged 44 tons of gold bullion from the wreck of HMS Laurentic between 1917 and 1924, and the covert work he and his divers performed by entering into sunken U-boats during World War I and recovering code books, ciphers, and other materials for the Naval Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy.
