Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins is a British Botaniste , born in 1799 with Tunbridge in the Kent and died in 1871.

Orphan of very young mother, it is his/her father, John George Children (1777 - 1852), considered Naturaliste, which raises it. It thus receives a rare scientific formation for the women of its time. Illustrator of reputation, it carries out two hundred and fifty engravings which will illustrate the English translation of the work of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744 - 1829), Histoire of the molluscs , which appears in 1822 - 1824, under the title of Genera off Shells . This translation, carried out by his/her father, has a big role in the nomenclature of the Coquillage S because it provides the types making it possible to identify the kinds created by Lamarck.

She Marie in 1825 with John Pelly Atkins and devotes herself consequently to the Biologie and begins the clothes industry of a Herbier. Anna Atkins offers certain specimens to the natural history museum of Kew Gardens. She becomes member, in 1839, of the botanical Société of London, one of rare the learned societies opened to the women. In 1841, it starts to be interested in the Algue S following the publication of has Manual off the British marinades Algae William Henry Harvey (1811 - 1866).

Thanks to her father, she knows work very well to sir John Herschel (1792 - 1871) and of William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877), two pioneers of the Photographie. She starts to make appear in 1841 her work British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions which is the first to use the Cyanotype. Twelve parts appear until in 1853 with approximately four hundred specimens, of which a dozen are to us parvenus more or less complete. In 1853, it applies the same process to the Fougère S and makes appear off Cyanotypes British and Foreign Ferns . She works in collaboration with her friend Anne Dixon (1799 - 1864). The cyanotypes have the advantage of a great stability in time and of a great simplicity. It bequeaths its herbarium to the British Museum in 1865.

Sources

Stanley Peter Dance (1966). Shell Collecting. Year Illustrated History . Faber and Faber (London): 344 p.
Eric Sartori (2006). History of the scientific women of Antiquity at the 20th century. Plon (Paris): 443 p. ISBN 2-259-20288-8.

External bond

Biography in English of About.com

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