Naturalist in the context of "Francesco Redi"

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.

Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and to quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species.

Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography", or more specifically of zoogeography.

A tide pool or rock pool is a shallow pool of seawater that forms on the rocky intertidal shore. These pools typically range from a few inches to a few feet deep and a few feet across. Many of these pools exist as separate bodies of water only at low tide, as seawater gets trapped when the tide recedes. Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. A tidal cycle is usually about 25 hours and consists of two high tides and two low tides.

Tide pool habitats are home to especially adaptable animals, like snails, barnacles, mussels, anemones, urchins, sea stars, crustaceans, octopus, and small fish, as well as seaweed. Inhabitants must be able to cope with constantly changing water levels, water temperatures, salinity, and oxygen content. At low tide, there is the risk of predators like seabirds. These pools have engaged the attention of naturalists and marine biologists, as well as philosophical essayists: John Steinbeck wrote in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, "It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool."

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (/ləˈmɑːrk/; French: [ʒɑ̃batist lamaʁk]), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biological evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws.

Lamarck fought in the Seven Years' War against Prussia, and was awarded a commission for bravery on the battlefield. Posted to Monaco, Lamarck became interested in natural history and resolved to study medicine. He retired from the army after being injured in 1766, and returned to his medical studies. Lamarck developed a particular interest in botany, and later, after he published the three-volume work Flore françoise (1778), he gained membership of the French Academy of Sciences in 1779. Lamarck became involved in the Jardin des Plantes and was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 1788. When the French National Assembly founded the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in 1793, Lamarck became a professor of zoology.

Edward Osborne Wilson ForMemRS (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology.

Born in Alabama, Wilson found an early interest in nature and frequented the outdoors. At age seven, he was partially blinded in a fishing accident; due to his reduced sight, Wilson resolved to study entomology. After graduating from the University of Alabama, he earned his doctorate at Harvard University, where he distinguished himself in multiple fields. In 1956, he co-authored a paper defining the theory of character displacement. In 1967, he developed the theory of island biogeography with Robert MacArthur.

On 3 June 1769, navigator Captain James Cook, naturalist Joseph Banks, astronomer Charles Green and naturalist Daniel Solander recorded the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti during Cook's first voyage around the world. During a transit, Venus appears as a small black disc travelling across the Sun. Transits of Venus occur in a pattern that repeats itself every 243 years, with two transits that are eight years apart, separated by breaks of 121.5 and 105.5 years. These men, along with a crew of scientists, were commissioned by the Royal Society of London for the primary purpose of viewing the transit of Venus. Not only would their findings help expand scientific knowledge, it would help with navigation by accurately calculating the observer's longitude. At this time, longitude was difficult to determine and not always precise. A "secret" mission that followed the transit included the exploration of the South Pacific to find the legendary Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown land of the South".

The dwarf sperm whale (Kogia sima) is a sperm whale that inhabits temperate and tropical oceans worldwide, in particular continental shelves and slopes. It was first described by biologist Richard Owen in 1866, based on illustrations by naturalist Sir Walter Elliot. The species was considered to be synonymous with the pygmy sperm whale (Kogia breviceps) from 1878 until 1998. The dwarf sperm whale is a small whale, 2 to 2.7 m (6 ft 7 in to 8 ft 10 in) and 136 to 272 kg (300 to 600 lb), that has a grey coloration, square head, small jaw, and robust body. Its appearance is very similar to the pygmy sperm whale, distinguished mainly by the position of the dorsal fin on the body–nearer the middle in the dwarf sperm whale and nearer the tail in the other.

The dwarf sperm whale is a suction feeder that mainly eats squid, and does this in small pods of typically one to four members. It is preyed upon by the killer whale (Orcinus orca) and large sharks such as the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharius). When startled, the whale can eject a cloud of red-brown fluid. Most of what is known of the whale comes from beached individuals, as sightings in the ocean are rare. Many of these stranded whales died from parasitic infestations or heart failure.

John Linnell (16 June 1792 – 20 January 1882) was an English engraver, portrait painter, and landscape painter. He was a naturalist and a rival to the artist John Constable. He had a taste for Northern European art of the Renaissance, particularly Albrecht Dürer. He also associated with the amateur artist Edward Thomas Daniell, and with William Blake, to whom he introduced the painter and writer Samuel Palmer and others of the Ancients.