Speaker - Rodolfo John Alaniz HISTORY

Charles Darwin's voyage aboard HMS Beagle inaugurated a new era in the history of biology. However, Darwin was one of many naturalists who gathered specimens and gained prestige on nineteenth-century British expeditions. This talk will explore the role that the British Empire played in the establishment of Darwin’s theory, and asks what this episode might reveal in an imperial context. Rodolfo John Alaniz is a postdoctoral affiliate at the Institute of Historical Studies and Ritter Memorial Fellow at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He has taught the history of science at the University of California, Berkeley, and will teach at UT during the 2018-2019 academic year. His has recently completed a monograph, Darwin in the Deep: Marine Invertebrates, Evolutionary Methodologies, and the Emergence of Natural Selection.