Beatrix Potter as a Scientist - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

Alex Jackson “Let's celebrate 150 years of Beatrix Potter: author, scientist and fungus-lover” https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2016/jul/27/lets-celebrate-150-years-of-beatrix-potter-author-scientist-and-fungus-lover

７月28日はベアトリックス・ポッター*1の150回目の誕生日。彼女は1866年７月28日に生まれた。
上の記事では「科学者」としてのポッターに焦点を当てている。

Influenced by family holidays in Scotland, Potter was fascinated by the natural world from a young age. Encouraged to follow her interests, she explored the outdoors with sketchbook and camera, honing her skills as an artist, by drawing and sketching her school room pets: mice, rabbits and hedgehogs. Led first by her imagination, she developed a broad interest in the natural sciences: particularly archaeology, entomology and mycology, producing accurate watercolour drawings of unusual fossils, fungi, and archaeological artefacts.

伯父である化学者Henry Enfield Roscoe*2；

Potter’s uncle, Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe FRS, an eminent nineteenth-century chemist, recognised her artistic talent and encouraged her scientific interests. By the 1890s, Potter’s skills in mycology drew Roscoe’s attention when he learned she had successfully germinated spores of a class of fungi, and had ideas on how they reproduced. He used his scientific connections with botanists at Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens*3 to gain a student card for his niece and to introduce her to Kew botanists interested in mycology.

菌類学者としてのデビューと挫折；

Although Potter had good reason to think that her success might break some new ground, the botanists at Kew were sceptical. One Kew scientist, George Massee*4, however, was sufficiently interested in Potter’s drawings, encouraging her to continue experimenting. Although the director of Kew, William Thistleton-Dyer*5 refused to give Potter’s theories or her drawings much attention both because she was an amateur and a female, Roscoe encouraged his niece to write up her investigations and offer her drawings in a paper to the Linnean Society*6.
In 1897, Potter put forward her paper, which Massee presented to the Linnean Society, since women could not be members or attend a meeting. Her paper, On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae, was not given much notice and she quickly withdrew it, recognising that her samples were likely contaminated. Sadly, her paper has since been lost, so we can only speculate on what Potter actually concluded.

この挫折の後、ポッターは関心を物語とイラストレーションへとスライドさせていく。〈ピーター・ラビット〉の物語はその挫折の上に成り立っているといえる*7。
死後の再評価；

Until quite recently, Potter’s accomplishments and her experiments in natural science went unrecognised. Upon her death in 1943, Potter left hundreds of her mycological drawings and paintings to the Armitt Museum and Library*8 in Ambleside, where she and her husband had been active members. Today, they are valued not only for their beauty and precision, but also for the assistance they provide modern mycologists in identifying a variety of fungi.
In 1997, the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter, noting the sexism displayed in the handling of her research and its policy toward the contributions of women.

Henry Enfield Roscoeについて；

London-born, Henry Roscoe, whose family roots were in Liverpool, studied at University College London, before moving to Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked under Robert Bunsen*9, inventor of the new-fangled apparatus that inspired Potter’s drawing. Together, using magnesium as a light source, Roscoe and Bunsen reputedly carried out the first flashlight photography in 1864. Their research laid the foundations of comparative photochemistry.
The English chemist, who married Beatrix Potter’s aunt, Lucy Potter, was a pioneer in photography and also the first to obtain the element vanadium in its pure form. His writings and public lectures spread an appreciation of the national importance of chemistry, while his academic career as professor of chemistry at Owens College, Manchester and later as vice-chancellor of the University of London, saw him promote the value of scientific and technical education. Roscoe also served as president of the Chemical Society (now the Royal Society of Chemistry).

ベアトリックス・ポッターって、南方熊楠 *10の同時代人だったのだった。

*1:Mentioned in http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20160302/1456844775

*2:See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Enfield_Roscoe https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%98%E3%83%B3%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A8%E3%83%B3%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B9%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BC

*3:http://www.kew.org/

*4:See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Edward_Massee

*5:See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Turner_Thiselton-Dyer

*6:http://www.linnean.org/

*7:”mycology’s loss was a gain for children’s literature”.

*8:http://www.armitt.com/

*9:See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bunsen