Society Of London Research Articles

A Tale of Two Anteaters: Madrid 1776 and London 1853

In 1776, the first living giant anteater to reach Europe arrived in Madrid from Buenos Aires. It survived 6 months in the Real Sitio del Buen Retiro before being transferred to the newly founded Real Gabinete de Historia Natural. In 1853, 77 years later, a second anteater was brought to London by two German showmen and exhibited at a shop in Bloomsbury, where it was visited by the novelist Charles Dickens. The animal was subsequently purchased by the Zoological Society of London, which classed it as one of the most important additions to the menagerie since its formation in 1828. Drawing on recent work in animal biography, this article assesses the reception of the two anteaters and considers their cultural and scientific significance. I examine the logistics of the exotic animal trade and trace the transatlantic networks that permitted anteaters-and knowledge about them-to move between continents. I also study the modes of representation, from painting to taxidermy, that enabled the anteaters to reach new audiences. By focusing in detail on the lives of two exceptional anteaters, the article illuminates understandings of the species more broadly and shows how different spaces and places shaped the creation and dissemination of zoological knowledge. I emphasise, in particular, the tensions that emerged between imperial and colonial science and the competing knowledge regimes of the natural history museum, the menagerie, and the field.

The famous Linnean Society meeting: from old errors to new insights

Abstract A meeting of the Linnean Society of London held on the evening of 1 July 1858 is famous for being the occasion of the first public announcement of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. This declaration was completed by publication of On the Origin of Species in the following year. The present analysis rebuffs this interpretation, in that the material read and subsequently published did not promote a theory of evolution, let alone the Origin theory. It did promote natural selection, a theory of organic change; however, a theory of evolution requires, in addition, a theory of how both the organic and physical components of the world behave and interact (i.e. a world-view theory). A first announcement of a theory of evolution also requires some promotion of the likelihood that new species will result. The Origin world view and species transmutation as an outcome are both largely absent from the contributions. Hence, Bell’s much maligned Presidential address might need re-assessment. Curiously, the published title almost denies species transmutation. The present paper undertakes detailed inspection of this meeting; it supports a re-assessment of its customary interpretation in the history of biological science.

Could Siberian ‘Natural Curiosities’ Be Replaced? Bioprospecting in the Eighteenth-Century

Abstract This article focuses on three unique products circulating in the eighteenth-century marketplace – castor, mammoth tusks, and asbestos – and highlights the role of naturalists working for the Royal Society in London and at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in promoting the consumption of these goods. Naturalists’ scientific investigations of these products were essential to distinguish and identify the quality (and, correspondingly, the ideal price) of Siberian commodities as compared to similar, or even equivalent, commodities from other regions. When these products were later discovered in the British colonies, the scientific debates between London and St. Petersburg only gained a new urgency, inspiring arguments about authenticity and efficaciousness.

Cultural governance within and across cities and regions: Evidence from the English publicly funded arts sector

There are significant inequalities in the publicly funded arts sector in England, including significant spatial inequalities. If anything, the critique of spatial inequalities in this ecology do not go far enough. This article uses a unique dataset of the boards of directors of Arts Council England’s national portfolio, derived from Companies House. While a majority of national portfolio organisations do not share board members with any other organisation, the analysis demonstrates that London-based organisations are significantly more likely to share board members with other companies than organisations outside London – and that, where an organisation outside of London does share a board member with a company in another region, it is more likely to be with a company in London than all other regions put together. It further demonstrates that this effect is most pronounced where these organisations are part of the same artform. Crucially, the organisations connected to London have more than double the portfolio income of other organisations, whether they share board members or not. This illustration of the concentration of power in London in the publicly funded arts sector, over and above the distribution of organisations in general, demonstrates the conceptual value of a cultural economy that emerges from interconnections within a local or national ecosystem. At the same time, the analysis and findings push the cultural ecology literature to centre inequality as a core issue as the concept is developed. Even the local cultural ecosystem is not exempt from the impact of the nation’s uneven (cultural) geography.

Geological mapping in the age of artificial intelligence

In 1815, during a time of industrial revolution, William Smith published the first geological map of Britain. This was followed in 1820 by the map by George Bellas Greenough, President of the Geological Society of London. These two pioneers disagreed on the best mapping approach: Smith used fossils to recognise and map different strata, while […]

Toward practical aqueous zinc-ion batteries for electrochemical energy storage

Chang Li is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry at University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Professor Linda F. Nazar. He received his bachelor's degree from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2019. His current research focuses on developing novel electrolyte systems for Zn²⁺-exclusive intercalation cathodes and advanced anodes for aqueous zinc-ion batteries. Shuo Jin is a PhD candidate in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University, under the supervision of Professor Lynden Archer. He received his bachelor's degree from South China University of Technology in 2018 and MS degree from Cornell University in 2020, both in chemical engineering. His current research focuses on understanding the effects of Zn electrodeposit crystallography on electrochemical reversibility of Zn anodes. Lynden Archer is the James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor and Joseph Silbert dean of engineering at Cornell University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and fellow of the American Physical Society and the Society of Rheology. His research focuses on fluid dynamics of simple and complex liquids at liquid solid interfaces, as well as their application for morphological control of battery anodes. Linda Nazar is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, an officer of the Order of Canada, and holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in solid state energy materials. She was awarded the Materials Research Society Medal in 2020 for her outstanding contributions to advanced materials design, synthesis, and characterization for energy storage, particularly Li battery technologies. Dr. Nazar carries out research in solid state chemistry/ionics, electrochemistry, and materials chemistry and has published more than 270 academic papers. Dr. Nazar is identified as a highly cited researcher (Web of Science; 2014–2021), with multiple highly cited papers that are defined as those ranking in the top 1% by citations for chemistry.

(Invited) Pd Monolayer Catalyst As Transformative Concept for Electrolytic Hydrogen Isotope Separation

The effect of strain in Pd monolayer catalyst is explored for electrolytic hydrogen isotope separation. Positive/negative strain increases/decreases strength of adsorbed hydrogen bond in overpotential region where recombination of hydrogen atoms is the rate determining step in hydrogen evolution reaction. As a result, the increased/decreased hydrogen isotope separation efficiency of Pd monolayers is expected as compared to bulk Pd. The positive/negative strain rises/lowers diffusion barrier for adsorbed hydrogen atoms. This effect favors/retards recombination of isotopes with smaller mass. As the surface is stretched/compressed, the neighboring adsorption sites separate/approach each other which affects heavier hydrogen isotopes more/less and result in their lower/higher probability for recombination. All these fundamental consideration indicate that Pd monolayers with different level of strain should have much different separation factors than corresponding bulk electrodes. To study described effects, Pd monolayers we synthesized electrochemically on Au(111) and Ru(0001) electrodes each yielding qualitatively different strain levels (Au-positive, Ru-negative). The adsorption strength of hydrogen isotopes is studied by infra-red spectroscopy. These results are input in classical models for isotope separation[1] T calculations. The calculated ratio between the rates of hydrogen and deuterium recombination and separation factors for Pd monolayers and corresponding bulk electrodes are compared to experimentally measured ones. The following discussion focuses on understanding and quantification of strain effects on separation efficiency of Pd monolayers. [1] B. E. Conway, Proceedings of The Royal Society of London, A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 247, 400 (1958).

Queries in early-modern English science

ABSTRACT The notion of a “query” occurred in legal, medical, theological and scientific writings during the early modern period. Whereas the “questionary” (from c. 1400s) sought replies from within a doctrine (such as Galenic medicine), in the 1600s the query posed open-ended inquiries, seeking empirical information from travellers, explorers and others. During the 1660s in Britain, three versions of the query (and lists of queries) emerged. Distinctions need to be made between queries seeking information via observation and those asking for experimentation, and between those aiming to keep theory to one side and those that framed theoretical conjectures. My examples are drawn from the work of the Royal Society of London (founded 1660) and from some of its leading members, especially Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton.

The Peer-Review Problem: a sedimentological perspective

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists of all time, had a deep disdain for peer review. The peer-review process, introduced over a thousand years ago in Syria and fully formalized by the Royal Society of London during 1665-1752, is an integral part of quality control in publishing articles and in awarding research grants. However, there are many lingering problems, which include: 1) anointed experts, 2) blind peer reviews, 3) delays, 4) orthodoxy, 5) bias, 6) groupthink, 7) Peer rejection of ideas (including Nobel-Prize winners), 8) inconsistency, 9) politics, 10) fake peer review and plagiarism, 11) “Sham peer review” in the U.S. medical community, 12) settling old scores, 13) online publications, 14) acknowledgements, 15) controversies in geological sciences, and 16) imbalance of peer reviewers in the biomedical research. Transparency, which is the underpinning trait of science journalism, is lost in the secrecy of blind peer review. Under the blind peer review, there are at least eight examples of scientific papers that were rejected before going on to win a Nobel Prize. Furthermore, there are 33 striking cases of peer rejection in science, including the notorious theory of “continental drift” by Alfred Wegener. My own examples of papers in process sedimentology and petroleum geology show that the same manuscript was rejected by one journal, but was accepted by another, suggesting that the blind peer review is obsolete. A solution is to adopt an Open Peer Review (OPR). Barring an open peer review, an alternative path is to publishing the entire peer-review comments and recommended decisions of all reviewers (anonymous and identified) at the end of a paper. This practice not only would force the anonymous reviewer to be objective and accountable but also would allow the entire peer-review process to be transparent.

Exploring Paths to OA Sustainability: Society Publishers Weigh In

MODERATOR: Heather Staines Director of Community Engagement and Senior Consultant Delta Think Trumbull, Connecticut SPEAKERS: Christopher Straub Chief Operating Officer GeoScienceWorld Washington, DC Jennifer Regala Director of Publications/Executive Editor American Urological Association Washington, DC Jeff Lewandowski Director of Publishing & Acting Publisher American Physical Society (APS Physics) Ellicott City, Maryland REPORTER: Shari Leventhal Executive Editor American Society of Nephrology Washington, DC After a brief introduction from Heather Staines, Christopher Straub made some general statements about Open Access (OA) and then discussed his own experience launching an OA journal. Straub explained that the OA movement aims to make scholarly publishing more sustainable and pushes us to think about options to move the field forward and help people arrive where they want to be in the future. Straub discussed the acquisition and success of GeoScienceWorld’s Lithosphere, a collaboration of the most highly respected society publishers in the geosciences, “providing open access to all scientifically rigorous and valid research related to earth, planetary, and environmental sciences” (Figure 1). The Lithosphere author publishing charge (APC) is $2,100 for all research and review articles, and members of the society collaborators receive a 10% discount. Straub attributed some of Lithosphere’s success to the partnership with Hindawi. Lithosphere is Gold OA and a collaboration between the following societies as of January 2020: American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), The Geological Society of America (GSA), Geological Society of London (GSL), Mineralogical Society of America (MSA), SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology, Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), and Society […]

Reflections on the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Reflections on the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Tan Sri Dato Haji Mubin Sheppard and Paul H. Kratoska Publication is one of the principal activities of most scholarly associations, including the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The Society's mission is to collect, disseminate, and preserve information about Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, and to fulfil this goal, it publishes a journal, original monographs, and reprints of older publications. Tan Sri Dato Haji Mubin Sheppard (1905–94) was an officer of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and served for many years as editor of its journal. In September 1985 he presented a paper about the journal at a conference on 'Academic publishing in ASEAN: problems and prospects'. The paper, which was printed in the conference proceedings,1 provided a useful summary of the journal's history and some of the problems it faced. His concerns included printing, marketing, and distribution (both overseas and in Malaysia), and how to ensure that back issues of the journal remained available and accessible. The points Sheppard mentioned in 1985 would have been familiar to Carl Gibson-Hill, who edited the journal 30 years earlier. Gibson-Hill complained of substandard printing and difficulties getting printers to make corrections. Editors needed to visit printing offices, and Sheppard notes that when the society's offices relocated from Singapore to Petaling Jaya, a satellite city of Kuala Lumpur, printing of the journal also moved from Singapore.2 Gibson-Hill also expressed concern about preserving back issues of the journal and keeping them available to the public. In connection with a possible donation of back issues to a library, Gibson-Hill wrote: if possible the back numbers should be bound, and arrangements made to bind each subsequent volume as it is completed. … We mention the matter [End Page 95] of binding as experience has taught us that loose parts of journal are much more liable to disappear from libraries than are bound volumes.3 When Sheppard wrote his article, authors submitted typed manuscripts and communicated with the journal editor through the postal service. Processing articles for publication involved keying them in on a linotype machine, which produced slugs of type used for printing, and proofreading took place on "galley proofs", long sheets of paper that would later be broken down into pages. Corrections required physical replacement of lines of metallic type, and changes had to conform to the number of words and letters in the corrected passage to fit the space taken up by the original text. At the time of printing, the editor ordered extra copies of the journal that were used to prepare offprints, copies of an article sent to the author for distribution to friends and colleagues. Thirty years later, when I assumed the editorship in 2015, every step in the process had changed. This article begins with Sheppard's paper, edited to remove details that have fallen out of date. Following his account, I have added an update explaining changes in the way manuscripts are submitted, published, and read. The History, Publications and Distribution of JMBRAS in Ancient and Modern Times By Tan Sri Dato' Mubin Sheppard History A meeting was held in Raffles Library, Singapore, on November 4th 1877 at which a resolution was presented and approved reading 'that the gentlemen present form themselves into a Society for collecting and recording scientific information in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago. The said Society to be, for the present, called The Straits Asiatic Society.' Those present included Archdeacon G. F. Hose, who presided, W. E. Maxwell, who was then the Colonial Secretary, A. M. Skinner, who was then the Colonial Treasurer, W. A. Pickering the Protector of the Chinese, C. J. Irving, the Resident Councillor Malacca, and D. F. A. Hervey, a Magistrate. Mr. Skinner, who was the first Honorary Secretary, wrote to the Royal Asiatic Society in London asking if the new body could be accepted as a Branch of the older Society (which had been founded in 1826). Approval was received from London in March 1878 and the Society was then renamed The Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The Governor of the Straits...

Opera Fans: Female Stratagems and Social Power

During the eighteenth century, both at close quarters and in crowds, folding fans served two kinds of femininity—flirtatiousness and modesty—allowing women to communicate a variety of affects, interrogatives, and illocutionary acts. Cheaply printed "maps" of the King's Opera House annual box subscribers' lists mounted as fans for seasons between 1787 and 1808 open up an additional perspective. Within the opera house, women dominated social affairs and wielded political influence over elite London society and national politics. This essay posits scenarios about how the information on these convenient box-plan objects was utilized by women aristocrats, gentry, and commoners with respect to sociability, regimes of observation, celebrity, social status, and social mobility that enhanced both social control and self-advancement in a constantly recalibrated register of prestige.

Ministering to Body and Soul: Medical Missions and the Jewish Community in Nineteenth-Century London

From 1879, evangelical missions aimed specifically at Jews began providing free medical services to the newly arrived immigrant community in London's East End. This article focuses on three specific medical missions to Jews belonging to the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Jews and the Mildmay Mission to the Jews. It considers the particular attractions of these medical missions in terms of what they were able to offer the immigrant Jew that existing state and voluntary medical services did not provide, alongside the cost and possible risk posed by attendance. The article questions whether the popularity of evangelical medical missions within the Jewish East End is as surprising as it may first appear, if the limited health care options available to the nineteenth-century poor are considered in conjunction with the additional obstacles facing Jewish immigrants, such as cultural and religious differences, anti-Jewish prejudice and most notably the language barrier.

Dr. Chunilal Bose: a forgotten scientist and a science communicator

Modern medical education began in Bengal with the establishment of Calcutta Medical College (CMC) in 1835. Soon it became an important centre for medical education and research in India. Chunilal Bose (1861–1930), an alumnus of CMC, worked in his alma mater as the Chemical Examiner of Bengal for more than three decades and conducted pioneering researches on toxins and poisons, food poisoning, food adulteration, diabetes, small pox, forensic science, effects of narcotics etc. His research publications appeared in reputed journals such as British Medical Journal, Transactions of the Chemical Society of London, The Indian Medical Gazette, and Calcutta Medical Journal etc. Bose was also instrumental in passing the Indian Poisons Act (1904) and in creating a public awareness against consumption of narcotics. Bose was an able science communicator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal and extensively wrote and lectured in a simple language, both in Bengali and English, on the subjects of public health and hygiene, general science and history of science that were connected to the wellbeing of the common people, with an intention of creating science awareness and scientific temper in the society. Honours and awards showered upon him during his lifetime, but Bose’s important contributions to medical sciences and science popularization were less discussed by the historians of science, as the focus generally remained on his more illustrious contemporaries. In the course of time, Chunilal Bose became a nearly forgotten scientist and a science communicator. His 160th birth anniversary was observed in 2021.

Documentary re-enactment in Raoul Peck’s Exterminate All the Brutes: countering the work of the imperial camera shutter

ABSTRACT Framed by an understanding of Raoul Peck as a transnational filmmaker performing the role of a public intellectual, this article reads Exterminate All the Brutes, his self-referential and self-reflective documentary released on HBO in 2021, as an essay film that scrutinizes the role of image-making in the production of history to advance a form of counterhistory and a practice of ‘potential history.’ This reading of the structural hinge between visual apparatuses, imperialism, and white supremacy – the core story Peck aims to crack open ‘from the inside out’ in the essay film – engages with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s arguments, in Potential History, on how the camera shutter operates as the primary mechanism of imperialism. To demonstrate Peck’s deployment of scripted fictional scenes in Exterminate as a documentary strategy of creating a counterhistory and rehearsing ‘potential history,’ I consider two re-enactments: 1) the archival montage of wet-plate photographs (c. 1872–1873) of the Victorian explorer Henry Morton Stanley and his enslaved adopted child Ndugu M’hali (renamed Kalulu), and 2) the dramatization of Frederic W. Farrar’s lecture on the ‘Aptitude of Races’ delivered at the Ethnological Society of London in 1866.

50 Years of Safeguarding – 950 Years of Clergy Discipline: Where do we go from here?

This article is based on an Ecclesiastical Law Society London Lecture delivered on 17 November 2021. It builds on a previous lecture entitled ‘Safeguarding in church and state over the last 50 years: “from Ball and Banks to Beech via Bell”’, which also formed the basis of an article published in this Journal in 2020. That article, among other things, identified a number of significant cases of sexual abuse by clergy which were/are the subject of ‘lessons learned’ reviews and concluded by suggesting how investigation and fact-finding might take place in the future, independent of the bishops, but under the supervision of a ‘judge’, and argued that effective risk assessments could only be based on findings of fact. The author was subsequently asked to chair a working party for the Ecclesiastical Law Society aimed at addressing how the Clergy Disciplinary Measure 2003 (‘CDM’) should be reformed. This article now deals with events that have occurred since, from the publication of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA)'s investigative reports into the Anglican Church (inter alia), the Lambeth group's proposals for reform of the CDM, through to General Synod's responses to both sets of recommendations. It also surveys in some detail the approach the church has taken to the assessment of risk within its safeguarding policy in recent years, as well as its historical approach to clergy discipline. The article concludes by drawing some threads together as a result of the author's own work and research into these two subjects over the past two years, and finishes by suggesting some possible directions in which the church ought now to move.

Semiosis of Artificial Intelligence and Social Development

Introduction. The article analyzes the semiotic aspects of the representation of artificial intelligence in the socio-cultural space and their influence on the nature of social development. The spread and penetration of technologies into social and political processes using artificial intelligence (AI) is accompanied by active discussions in the socio-political environment. Artificial intelligence is considered as one of the most important resources of social and political development, so the desire of states, politicians and public organizations to determine the semantic framework of its public perception is understandable.Methodology and sources. The theoretical foundations of the work were the classic works on semiotics by Ch. S. Pierce, Ch. W. Morris, as well as theoretical works on modern political semiotics (I.V. Fomin, M.V. Ilyin and others). To work with the empirical base, analyzes of documents (reports and materials from UNESCO, the European Commission, the Royal Society of London, Stanford University), public opinion polls (VTsIOM), discourse analysis, semantic and content analysis of materials from Russian and foreign media were used.Results and discussion. As a result of the study, we found that the main contradiction that accompanies the understanding of artificial intelligence, its essence and purpose at all levels of socio-political discourse is the polarization of public ideas about AI as a control tool and (or) a development tool. The contextual fields were also outlined, within which further development of the semiosis of artificial intelligence is possible.Conclusion. To understand the nature of the representation of technologies using AI in socio-political discourse and to manage this process, an interdisciplinary approach and an appeal to the scientific potential of the social sciences and the humanities, in particular, semiotics, are appropriate, which makes it possible to study the semiosis of technology at the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels. It also seems promising to turn to a comparative analysis of cultural and historical traditions and national-state models of social management that specifically integrate AI into social processes.

Does Handling for Public Talks in Zoos Affect the Behaviour of Captive Mexican Red-Kneed Spiders Brachypelma hamorii?

Zoos include invertebrates in visitor interaction sessions to educate and spread conservation messages to the public. Yet, the welfare implications of these encounters on invertebrates are unstudied. Empirical studies reveal negative effects of handling on vertebrate species, thus providing reason to investigate impacts on invertebrates. Mexican red-kneed spiders Brachypelma hamorii are regularly handled by keepers for public talks at the Zoological Society of London, London Zoo. This study investigates whether handling affects the spiders’ 24-h activity and enclosure usage. Three spiders were filmed under infrared light for 24 h following being handled, and on control (no-handling) days. The proportion of time that spiders spent under cover or exhibiting locomotion, limb-interaction, and object-interaction behaviour was recorded using instantaneous scan sampling. The spiders spent, on average, significantly more time under cover (7.8% increase) and exhibited significantly more limb-interaction behaviour (1.4% increase) on handling days. Handling for public talks therefore affects the behaviour and enclosure use of these captive Brachypelma hamorii. Although it is not yet possible to infer welfare implications, the presence of these behavioral responses suggests that protocols to monitor the behaviour of invertebrates following handling should be developed, and further behavioral studies are warranted to validate potential stress indices.

Propaganda of Ecological Agenda and New Global Covenant

Introduction. The article presents a detailed analysis of scientific research of the last decade in the field of ecology, economy and population of the planet. The object of research is modern universal society. The subject of the research is new values, ideology and communication promoted by the new philosophy of sustainable development. The purpose of the study is to analyze and forecast the development of mankind in the medium and long term (2050 and 2100).Materials and methods. The main analytical material is scientific reports that are in the public domain: People and the Planet of the Royal Society of London (2012), Come On! Capitalism, Short-Termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet of the Club of Rome (2018), COVID-19.The Great Reset of the Davos WEF 2020. The theses of these works are compared with each other and other studies in this field. The research is carried out by historical, comparative and analytical methods. Analytical data are extrapolated to obtain forecast options within the stated horizon. The results of the study. The obtained research results allow us to make forecasts of the development of the civilization, the processes of globalization and regionalization, and to evaluate options for such development.Conclusion. The results obtained allow us to speak about the new philosophy promoted by global institutions and the resulting new values, ideology, communication and politics. The risks and prospects of the new paradigm for Russia are investigated.

Contributors

REBECCA ANDERSEN teaches US History and Public History at Utah State University. She received a PhD in history from Arizona State University. Her work centers on twentieth-century Mormon environmental and urban history and has been published in the Utah Historical Quarterly. Andersen's recent book chapter, “‘For the Strength of the Hills’: Casting a Concrete Zion” appeared in The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History (2019).SARA DANT is Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor and Chair of History at Weber State University. Her work focuses on environmental politics in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the creation and development of consensus and bipartisanism. She is the author of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West, an advisor and interviewee for Ken Burns's forthcoming documentary film The American Buffalo, the author of several prize-winning articles on western environmental politics, the co-author of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American National Parks, and the author of chapters for three books on Utah.WILLIAM T. PARRY is Professor Emeritus of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah. He taught geological subjects at Texas Tech University and the University of Utah and has worked for oil and mining companies. Parry's latest book is Utah's Nineteenth-Century Stone Quarries (2020). His wife Gayle is the great-granddaughter of William S. Godbe and the granddaughter of Anthony H. Godbe.LAURIE J. BRYANT spent her childhood in what were then the wilds of southern California—hills and deserts, bays and beaches—and she chose a career that allowed her to work in those places, paleontology. After earning a Bachelor's degree in geology at Occidental College, she went to the South Dakota School of Mines to study with the famous R. W. Wilson, and then to the University of California, Berkeley. Bryant's two sons grew up as she did, in the outdoors. After a series of consulting jobs, she became one of the first Regional Paleontologists for the Bureau of Land Management, first in Wyoming and then in Utah. Thanks to the influence of Thomas Carter and W. Randall Dixon, Utah's history and architecture captured Bryant's interest after she retired and have held it ever since.MICHAEL W. HOMER is a Salt Lake City trial lawyer who has written books and articles concerning Utah and Mormon history. He is the past chair of the Utah Board of State History, a fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, chair of the J. Willard Marriott Library Advisory Board, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and a past president of the Alta Club. He serves as the Honorary Italian Consul in Utah and was recently recognized by the President of the Italian Republic as a Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella D'Italia (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy).