Author(s): Mesquita, Sandra ; Sequeira, Miguel Menezes de ; Castel-Branco, Cristina
Date: 2021
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/27843
Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Subject(s): A manual flora of Madeira; botanical collectors; Canary Islands; Cape Verde; history of botany; Macaronesia; social network analysis
The growth of scientific knowledge in the natural sciences in the nineteenth century to a large extent depended on networking and communication between naturalists. Our case-study illustrates such forms of scientific communication using a social network analysis (SNA) approach for studying the relationships of the Reverend Richard Thomas Lowe, an English naturalist who lived in Madeira from 1826 to 1852, and continued to visit until his death in a shipwreck in 1874. During his lifetime, he established a network of contacts mainly in the United Kingdom and in Madeira, which enabled him to develop and publish his pioneering work on the local flora, including A manual flora of Madeira and the adjacent islands of Porto Santo and the Desertas.
