SOLANDER, DANIEL CARL

(b. Piteå, Sweden. 19 February 1733; d. London, England, 13 May 1782)

natural history.

Solander’s father. Carl Solander, was a delegate to the Riksdag as well as a Lutheran rector and rural dean for Piteå his mother, Magdalena Bostadia, was the daughter of a district judge. After spending his formative years in Swedish Lapland, he entered the University of Uppsala on 1 July 1750, apparently to prepare fur a legal or clerical career; but his study of natural history with Linnaeus and of chemistry with Wallerius turned his interest toward science.

In 1752 Solander helped Linnaeus classify and index the royal natural history collections at Ulriksdal and Drottningholm, as well as the collection of Count Carl Tessin; the results were published in Museum Adolphi Frederica, Museum Ludevicae Ulricae, and Museum Tessinianum. In 1756 Solander published Caroli Linnaei Elementa botanica, an epitome of Linnaeus’ general botany. Two years later he examined a supposedly parasitic worm and reported his findings in “Furia infernalis, vermis” (1772). In 1758 Solander assisted Linnaeus in examining Patrick Browne’s herbarium; his efforts, coupled with his frequent visits Linnaeus’ home, aroused in the latter such esteem for his student that he wanted Solander to be both his successor and son-in-law.

During the 1750’s Solander made two botanical expeditions to Lapland. In 1753 he traveled up the Piteå River, crossed the kjölen Mountains in Norway, botanized in the vicinity of Rörstad, and returned to Uppsala. In 1755 he studied the natural history of the Tornio basin.

Chosen by Linnaeus to help popularize the Linaean system in England, Solander left Uppsala on 6 April 1759; but a severe attack of epidemic influenza detained him in southern Sweden until 30 May 1760, and he did not arrive in England until 30 June. Solander was readily accepted into English society. Boswell once said of him, “Throw him where you will, he swims.” Frances Burney found him “very sociable, full of talk, information, and entertainment, .... a philosophical gossip.” Richard Pulteney wrote that “the urbanity of his manners, and his readiness to afford every assistance in his power, joined to that clearness and energy with which he affected it,” made Solander and the Linnaean system popular with naturalists.

A few weeks after his arrival, Solander had firmly established himself as the link between Linnaeus and English naturalists. In this capacity he collected plants for Linnaeus, obtained favors for English naturalists from him, and toured southern and southeastern England. He proved so useful an authority in decisions on Linnaean taxonomy that John Ellis and Peter Collinson worked to seem him a post, which he received in 1763, with the newly established British Museum.

Solander immediately began organizing the natural history collection, and by 1768 he had completed the first-draft descriptions. In the meantime he had described the collections of Gustavus Brander, the duchess of Portland, John Ellis, John Bartram, and Alexander Garden.

In June 1764 Solander became an active member of the Royal Society, and his friendship with Joseph Banks dates from that year. He advised Banks on how to prepare for his voyage in 1766 to Labrador and Newfoundland, and two years later, consulted with him on preparations for the voyage of the Endeavour, headed by Captain James Cook (1768–1771), After several days of planning, the Swedish naturalist asked to join the voyage and was accepted. Although Solander and Banks spent their time routinely collecting plant and animal specimens and conducting observations of the natural history and inhabitants, the voyage was not without its dangers: a fierce snowstorm on Tierra del Fuego, the near wreck of the Endeavour on the Great Barrier Reef, and an outbreak of malaria followed by dysentery in Batavia, Java.

The published results of their joint efforts are disappointing. Solander and Banks collected an estimated 100 new families and 1,000 new species of plants, in addition to hundreds of new species of animals. Of these new specimens, only 100 plant descriptions, printed by the British Museum (Natural History) in the early 1900’S, and 200 insect descriptions by Johann Christian Fabricius, have been published. A lazy streak in Solander has often been blamed for the neglect; but the descriptions were, in fact, finished before Solander’s death, and in 1785 Banks wrote that the project was nearing completion. Thus it was Banks who. for his own reasons, did not complete the project.

Solander Island (off the southern coast of South Island, New Zealand) and Cape Solander (the south side of Botany Bay, New South Wales, Australia) were named during the voyage, and Solander devised the Solander case, a book-shaped box that is still used, to guard the manuscript records of the voyage. On 21 November 1771 he was awarded the D.C.L. by Oxford for his part in the voyage.

Solander’s manuscript descriptions were used by John Latham in his ornithological studies, by Johann Reinhold Forster for his reports on the second Cook voyage, and by Joseph Gaertner for his studies on plants. Furthermore, Solander’s efforts helped establish a precedent: naturalists were subsequently included in government-sponsored voyages of exploration. Charles Darwin held the post aboard H.M.S. Beagle. Solander’s and Banks’s praise of the breadfruit contributed to attempts to introduce it to the West Indies and on the voyage of H.M.S. Bounty. Their influence on Cook stimulated his awareness of the importance of human and natural history, which was put to good use on his subsequent voyages.

Solander was part of a team of scientists recruited by Banks for Cook’s second voyage. Banks refused to go because of inadequate quarters, and in the summer and fall of 1772 the group went instead on a four-month journey to the western coast of Britain, Iceland, and the Orkneys. Again, the results were never published, but the data were made available through Banks’s collection and, later, through the collections of the British Museum.

After returning to London, Solander resumed his busy schedule, regaining his post as assistant keeper at the British Museum and becoming keeper in June 1773. He increased its collection, testified at Parliamentary hearings on the museum, organized and described its collection, and conducted tours. As Banks’s private secretary, he was in charge of one of the largest natural history collections; as Banks’s librarian, he named all of the new plants received by the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and assisted William Aiton in the early planning of Hortus Kewensis.

Solander helped several others as well. The duchess of Portland continued to employ him to help with her collection, and he aided Thomas Pennant in his studies in zoology, John Fothergill in his Upton garden, and John Lightfoot with his Flora scotica. Descriptions for Ellis’ works were also written by Solander, and he participated in experiments by Charles Blagden and Benjamin Franklin. According to Thomas Krok, Solander contributed to sixty-six publications.

An active member of several scientific societies, Solander regularly attended meetings of the Royal Society and dined with the Royal Society Club, of which he was treasurer from 1774 until his death. He also regularly attended the meetings of a nameless society of scientists that met at Jack’s Coffee House, an affiliation that led him to visit the Lunar Society of Birmingham. He met with Fothergill’s medical society and was a corresponding member of the Académic des Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Gesellschaft Naturfor-schender Freunde, the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Goteborg, and the Academy of Sciences of Naples.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Solander’s MSS and letters are dispersed. The British Museum (Natural History) has a large collection of his biological notes and MSS, as well as his “Memoranda Connected With the Visit to Iceland....” The Linnean Society of London has a collection of Solander’s letters, particularly those written to Linnaeus. British Museum MSS Add. 45,874 and 45,875 are Solander’s diaries of his work at the museum: MS Add. 29,533 contains some of John Elli’s correspondence with Solander. Many of Solander’s letters were included in James Edward Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists (London, 1821).

Solander’s own publications include Caroli Linnaei Elementa botanica (Uppsala, 1756): “An Account of the Gardenia....” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 52, pt. 2 (1762), 654–661; and ldquo;Furia infernalis, vermis, et ab eo concitari solitus morbus,” in Nova acta Regiae Societatis scientiarum upsliensis, 1 (1795), 44–58.

II. Secondary Literature. On Solander and his scientific work, see Roy A. Rauschenberg, “A Letter of Sir Joseph Banks Describing the Life of Daniel Solander,” in Isis, 55 (1964), 62–67: “Daniel Carl Solander, the Naturalist on the Endeavour Voyage,” ibid., 58 (1967), 367–374; and “Daniel Carl Solander. Naturalist on the ‘Endeavour.’” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 58. pt, 8 (1968). 1–58, with extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Earlier accounts and reminiscences include Frances Burney d’Arblay, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, C. F. Barrett, ed., I (London-New York, 1904), 318; James Boswell, The Journal of James Boswell, G.Scott and F. A. Pottle, eds,, XIV (Mt, Vernon, N.Y., 1930). 182: and Richard Pulteney. Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progress of Botany in Britain, II (London. 1790), 350–351. See also Thomas Krok. Bibliotheca botanica suecana (Uppsala-Stockholm, 1925), 655–660.

Roy A. Rauschenberg