An "Odd Fish" Who Swam Against the Tide

The pioneering naturalist Constantine Rafinesque did just about everything, and he always did it his way

  • By Bil Gilbert
  • Smithsonian magazine, January 1999, Subscribe
 

The intellectual breadth of the man was enormous. By the time he was 52, he had been a botanist, geologist, historian, poet, philosopher, philologist, economist, merchant, manufacturer, professor, surveyor, architect, author and editor, among other accomplishments. In the early and middle 1800s, he roamed the eastern part of the North American continent, collecting and cataloguing plants and animals. He is credited with having first described more than 100 species.

Though his erudition was impressive, Rafinesque's readiness to advertise it made him a difficult man to like. One 19th-century educator observed that "no more remarkable figure has ever appeared...in the annals of science.... But Rafinesque loved no man or woman." During his various stints as a teacher, he was often a figure of fun. Whenever he did something or thought something, he almost always wrote a book or monograph on the topic. One book, a 5,400-line epic poem, discusses a theory of evolution that predates Darwin's by more than 20 years. He could make mistakes, one scholar concedes, but because "he thought almost anything [was] possible in nature," Rafinesque's thinking was far ahead of his time.


The intellectual breadth of the man was enormous. By the time he was 52, he had been a botanist, geologist, historian, poet, philosopher, philologist, economist, merchant, manufacturer, professor, surveyor, architect, author and editor, among other accomplishments. In the early and middle 1800s, he roamed the eastern part of the North American continent, collecting and cataloguing plants and animals. He is credited with having first described more than 100 species.

Though his erudition was impressive, Rafinesque's readiness to advertise it made him a difficult man to like. One 19th-century educator observed that "no more remarkable figure has ever appeared...in the annals of science.... But Rafinesque loved no man or woman." During his various stints as a teacher, he was often a figure of fun. Whenever he did something or thought something, he almost always wrote a book or monograph on the topic. One book, a 5,400-line epic poem, discusses a theory of evolution that predates Darwin's by more than 20 years. He could make mistakes, one scholar concedes, but because "he thought almost anything [was] possible in nature," Rafinesque's thinking was far ahead of his time.

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Comments (1)

How about letting us read the whole article, rather than the first two paragraphs, or indicating how one might find the whole article?

Posted by Carolyn on April 21,2011 | 06:00 PM



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