Exploring Explorers in London

 For those interested in the history of exploration, what is there to see in London?

The Hakluyt Society has its postal address in the map room of the British Library at St Pancras. They have one or two lectures a year dealing in the history of exploration and publish dozens of journals from the golden age of exploration.

The British Library also contains many original manuscripts (journals, logbooks, letters, books) from various voyages including Cook, Flinders, Harriot, Vancouver, etc. These have to be requested in the Manuscripts room. Occasionally the journals of Scott and Cook are placed on display in the treasures exhibition in the John Ritblat Gallery. The journal of Samuel Wallis, discoverer of Tahiti, is at the National Archives at Kew. Many publications recounting voyages that were popular in their day are now out of print. An example is William Dampier's New Voyage Round the World 1697.

There is a Captain Cook Society, but it is not based in London, having meetings up in Yorkshire and in Australia. Besides the Hakluyt Society and James Caird Society, there don't seem to be any other societies based in London relating to explorers or the history of exploration. The far future of exploration i.e. space travel, is covered by the British Interplanetary Society.

The British Museum in Bloomsbury has a few rooms containing objects collected by explorers. The Enlightenment Gallery (Room 1) on the ground floor has objects from Australasia and Polynesia collected by Captain Cook as well as some shells collected by William Dampier. There are also engravings and copper plates from Joseph Banks' Florilegium.  North American objects collected on Cook's third voyage (late 1770s) are in with the North American collections, curated by Jonathan King. In Room 46 (upstairs), there are also some cameos to Cook and Banks, as well as Cook's Copley Medal (for tackling scurvy) and a Wedgwood medallion made from clay brought back by Captain Arthur Philip from Sydney Harbour.

The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has the Oceans of Discovery gallery showcasing objects, maps and journeys from the age of discovery e.g. Cook's journals, a model of the Endeavour, and navigational instruments. There is also a display dedicated to Antarctica. Next door in the Queens House (designed by Inigo Jones) is a gallery dedicated to William Hodges' landscapes and portraits from Cook's second voyage. There is also a portrait to Lord Sandwich, one of Cook's patrons. Up on the hill is the famous Royal Observatory. In its museum are the Kendall marine chronometer copies of Harrison's H4 that sailed with Cook, Bligh and Flinders. There's also a logbook from Anson's 1740-44 voyage. Edmund Halley, who conducted his own voyage to the south seas, is commemorated by a portrait and a tombstone at the entrance to Flamsteed's house. The library of the National Maritime Museum has moved into a new building in 2011 and houses extensive maps, journals, logbooks, ship blue prints, admiralty reports, and other publications relating to the history of exploration. Anyone can be a member and explore the manuscripts and books in the reading room.

The Royal Society, which sponsored some voyages of exploration, such as Cook's Endeavour voyage of 1768-1771 has various records from its on-board naturalists and scientists. It's located at Carlton Terrace and has a lending library.

Portraits: Portraits of ship's captains can be found at Greenwich and in the National Portrait Gallery. At Greenwich, the famous Dance portrait of Captain Cook is normally on display in the National Maritime Museum, as is one of James Clark Ross. At the National Portrait Gallery, Francis Drake, Walter Rayleigh, William Dampier and Joseph Banks can usually be seen as well as a Cook engraving.

Statues: Captain Cook is commemorated with statues at Greenwich and at The Mall just west of Admiralty Arch (near Trafalgar Square). At Waterloo Place near the Royal Society are statues to John Franklin and Robert Falcon Scott. A statue of Joseph Banks is in the Natural History Museum at Kensington (upstairs near the sequoia).

Blue plaques: In Greater London there are plaques to Captain Cook (Mile End), Matthew Flinders (Fitzroy Square), Robert Fitzroy (Onslow Square), James Clark Ross (Blackheath), and Robert Falcon Scott (Oakley Street Chelsea). William Bligh's old house is on 100 Lambeth Road (close to the Imperial War Museum), near where he is buried in the Museum of Garden History at Lambeth (next to Lambeth Palace and Lambeth Bridge). Ernest Shackleton has a blue plaque is on Aberdeen House (now St Davids) at Westwood Hill near Crystal Palace. Joseph Banks used to live at 32 Soho Square, in the building now occupied by 20th Century Fox. There is an engraved memorial on the wall. Thomas Henry Huxley, who went on an epic voyage on board the Rattlesnake in the 1840s has a plaque at St Johns Wood (near Abbey Road).

Graves: Not many graves exist in Greater London. As exploration was a dangerous activity, many perished at sea. Others have become simply lost. For example, William Dampier, Samuel Wallis and Matthew Flinders were buried in England but their graves have been lost. Drake, Cook, Franklin, Bass, and Scott died while on voyages. Shackleton is buried in South Georgia. Charles Clerke from Cook's third voyage is buried on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

The graves that can be visited in the London area are: John Ross, Robert McCormick, Robert Brown, and Archibald Menzies, and John Stuart are all at Kensal Green Cemetery. Captain Robert Fitzroy is at All Saints Church in Upper Norwood. William Bligh's tomb is at the Gardening Museum next to Lambeth Palace. Joseph Banks' grave is at St Leonard's Church in Heston (west of London) but the exact location is lost. James Clark Ross is at The Abbey, Aston Abbotts in Buckinghamshire. Edmund Halley is at St Margaret's Churchyard in Lewisham behind Greenwich (same grave as Pond) and not marked.
John Harrison, inventor of the marine chronometer is at St John's Church, Hampstead, as is William Westall, landscape artist on Flinders' Investigator voyage. There is a plaque to Thomas Harriot in the Bank of England (viewable by appointment) as he was buried where the bank now stands. Joseph Hooker is buried at St Anne's Church, Kew.

Other: There is a replica Golden Hinde on Southbank near London Bridge. Dulwich College has the James Caird that Shackleton made his epic 1916 rescue journey with. More of John Harrison's clocks and marine chronometers are at the Clockmakers' Museum next to the Guildhall and in British Museum (Room 38 & 39). There are also busts to Joseph Banks in the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery and the Chelsea Physic Garden. The Royal Geographical Society in Kensington sometimes hosts talks about the history of exploration, as does the Zoological Society of London. The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew sometimes have exhibitions related to the great voyages of exploration that brought have botanical specimens. The herbarium in the Botany Library at the Natural History Museum (Kensington) also have most of the botanical specimens brought back on Cook's voyages and they can be viewed by appointment.

When you're tired of London...

When you're tired of London you're tired of life, Johnson famously quipped.

And London was host to quite a few scientists that grew tired of life and are buried in its many cemeteries.

I've already written about some of the giants who lie in Westminster Abbey: Darwin, Newton, Rutherford, Herschel, Hunter, Lyell, Thomson, etc.

Here are the Greater London locations of some of the other scientists, explorers, and inventors:

Alexander Fleming... St Pauls Cathedral crypt
Archibald Menzies... Kensal Green (tombstone fallen & illegible)
Charles Babbage... Kensal Green
Charles Wheatstone... Kensal Green
Christoper Wren... St Pauls Cathedral crypt
David Don... Kensal Green
George Vancouver... St Peter's Churchyard, Petersham
Edmund Halley... St. Margaret's Churchyard, Lewisham (with John Pond)
Franz Bauer... St Anne's Church, Kew (inside)
George Don... Kensal Green
George Price... St Pancras & Islington Cemetery, Finchley (unmarked grave at plot #90, section K10).
Herbert Spencer... Highgate Cemetery, west (opposite Marx)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel... Kensal Green
John Gould... Kensal Green
John Harrison... St John's Churchyard, Hampstead
John Theophilus Desaguliers... Queens Chapel Savoy, off The Strand
Jacob Bronowski... Highgate Cemetery, east (on the public tour)
John Ross...Kensal Green
John Snow... Brompton Cemetery
Joseph Banks... St Leonard's Church, Heston (near Heathrow)
Joseph Lister... Hampstead Cemetery
Joseph Hooker... St Anne's Church, Kew
William Hooker... St Anne's Church, Kew
Michael Faraday... Highgate Cemetery - east (not normally accessible to the public)
Robert Boyle... St Martins in the Fields, Trafalgar Square (tombstone is lost)
Robert Brown... Kensal Green
Robert Hooke... City of London Cemetery, St Helens Bishopgate memorial
Robert McCormick... Kensal Green
Roderick Murchinson... Bromptom Cemetery
Rosalind Franklin... Willesden Jewish Cemetery
Samuel Pepys... St Olave Hart Street (together with wife)
Sigmund Freud... Golders Green (cremated, urn for ashes)
Thomas Bayes... Bunhill Fields
Thomas Harriot... Bank of England (plaque only where grave used to be)
Thomas Henry Huxley... East Finchley Cemetery
Thomas Newcomen... Bunhill Fields (lost)
Walter Raleigh... St Margaret's (next to Westminster Abbey)
William Westall... St John's Churchyard, Hampstead


Those not buried in London...


Ada Lovelace...  Church of St Mary Magdalene Hucknall, Nottingham (family tomb with Lord Byron)
Adam Smith... Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh
Aldous Huxley... Watts Cemetery, Compton (family grave with Leonard, Julian)
Alfred Russell Wallace... Broadstone Cemetery, Broadstone, Dorset
Arthur Eddington... Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge
Charles Clerke... Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka Peninsula
Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson)... Auteuil cemetery, Paris
David Hume... Old Calton cemetery, Calton Hill, Edinburgh
Erasmus Darwin... All Saints Church, Breadsall
Ernest Shackleton... Grytviken, South Georgia
Francis Bacon... St Michaels Church, St Albans
Francis Darwin... Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge
Francis Galton... Claverdon Churchyard
George Anson... Colwich, Staffordshire
George Moore... Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge
Henry Cavendish... Derby Cathedral, Derby
Horace Darwin... Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge
Humphrey Davy... Cimetière des Rois, Geneva
James Clark Ross...  The Abbey, Aston Abbotts churchyard, Buckinghamshire
James Clerk Maxwell.... Parton Kirk, Scotland
James Hutton... Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh
James Watt... St Marys Church, Handsworth, Birmingham
John Evelyn... St John the Evangelist, Wotton (inside the church)
John Flamsteed... Burstow Church, Surrey
Josiah Wedgwood I... Stoke-on-Trent church 
Joseph Black... Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh
Joseph Priestley... Riverview Cemetery in Northumberland, Pennsylvania
Joseph Wright... Derby Cathedral, Derby
Julian Huxley... Watts Cemetery, Compton (family grave with Leonard, Aldous)
Lise Meitner... St James Church, Bramley, Hampshire
Lord Rayleigh...  Terling Place, Witham in Essex (family plot)... aka John Strutt
Ludwig Wittgenstein... Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge
Paul Dirac... Tallahassee, Florida
Richard Hakluyt... the Cathedral Church of the Holy Undivided Trinity, Bristol

Robert Falcon Scott... Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Thomas Malthus... Bath Abbey, Bath
Thomas Young... St Giles Church, Farnborough, Kent
William Gilbert... Holy Trinity Church, Colchester (church closed)

William Harvey... Hempstead Church, Essex
William Henry Fox Talbot... Lacock church
William Herschel... St Laurence’s Church, Upton, near Slough
William Hamilton... Slebech Old Church, Pembrokeshire (small memorial plaque)
William Smith... St Peters Church, Marefair, Northampton

Lost Graves

      ...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. 

So ends George Eliot's Middlemarch, one of the greatest of English novels. Eliot, whose real name was Mary Anne Evans, has a grave in Highgate's east cemetery that is well visited. Nearby lies a man she loved, Herbert Spencer, who coined the term "survival of the fittest", and who melded Darwinism with capitalism in an influential lecture tour of the USA. Coincidentally, lying almost opposite Spencer (politically and geographically) rests Karl Marx, probably London's most popular grave pilgrimage.

Having had a look around London's most famous cemeteries to see who is buried where, it's striking to realise how many grave locations have been forgotten. The only thing worse that an unvisited tomb is a lost one. Members of the nobility were usually buried on church land adjoining their estates and could afford elaborate tombs, but mere mortals' post-death fate was more precarious. The poor and outcast could be dumped into mass unmarked graves.

There are a number of reasons:

1. London is always short of space, and cemeteries can get converted to parks, gardens or handed over to property developers. City churches had their burial grounds paved over. Sometimes the bodies were reburied, often not. Graves that were leased, and had expired, could be dug open again and other bodies buried on top of the exiting coffins.

2. The building of the railways from the 1830s led to several cemeteries being closed or reduced in size. The widening of roads to accommodate motorised vehicles also reduced the size of existing burial grounds.

3. Britain's damp weather erodes tombstones. An half-inch deep engraved stone can't be expected to last much more than 150 years. Most older than 200 years become illegible if not re-engraved. Lichen and moss don't help either, especially if it's a flat tombstone. Graves can also subside underground with time. Tombstones can topple over. Outside of Westminster Abbey and the city churches, hardly any graves remain before the 18th century.

4. Amalgamation of parishes. As Britain becomes more secular, many churches (especially Victorian ones without Grade I or II heritage listings), are sold off to property developers.

5. Cremation. Around the turn of the 20th century, cremation became a common burial practice, especially for agnostics and atheists, and many requested that their ashes be scattered at sea or over beloved rural country. Alan Turing, Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell and HG Wells are examples.

6. Lost at sea. Often explorers died at sea and British practice was to bury them at sea (the exemption is Admiral Nelson). Examples of explorers who were either lost or buried at sea include Captain James Cook, Francis Drake, George Bass, John Cabot, and John Franklin.

Sometimes the location of a burial is known due to church records, but nothing remains to mark the spot. Either the descendants of the deceased or a learned society dedicated to preserving the memory is required to purchase a new tombstone. An example is William Hazlitt's grave at St Anne's in Soho.

Here's a list of a few lost graves...

St James Gardens beside Euston Station
where  Matthew Flinders was buried

1. Matthew Flinders... explorer who circumnavigated Australia in the early 19th century (then known as New Holland), gave Australia its name, and wrote up his epic voyage. He died in 1814 (like fellow explorer George Vancouver, he was just 40 when he died) and was buried at St James Churchyard, now next to Euston Station, but the ground was reduced in size and converted to a garden. There is nothing to see there related to Flinders. Perhaps on the bicentennial of his death in 2014 a memorial will be erected.

2. William Dampier... the first Englishman to visit Australia in 1688, the first to circumnavigate the world three times, and inextricably linked with Alexander Selkirk who became Defoe's inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, the first English novel. Like Flinders, he wrote a book on his voyages, and passed away into obscurity, dying in 1715. His grave's location has been unknown for centuries, and could even be outside London.

3. John Polidori... the Edinburgh-educated doctor that accompanied Byron to Switzerland. He was there at the famous June 1816 night by Lake Geneva, and expanded a fragment of a vampire story that Byron began into the best-selling gothic short story The Vampyre. He was the first to merge the eastern European myth of the undead with an aristocrat, which was later taken up by Bram Stoker in Dracula. Polidori committed suicide in 1821, aged 25 (most of the romantics died young), and was buried in St Pancras Old Church, just north of the British Library. The grave is now lost, most probably due to the narrowing of the burial ground  when the railway was constructed. Thomas Hardy was involved in repositioning a lot of the graves.

The Hardy Tree, where many graves at St Pancras Old Church
 were moved to make way for the railway

4. Robert Boyle... chemist, experimenter (with Robert Hooke) on the properties of gas using the air-pump. Once one of the wealthiest men in England, we know he was buried at St Martins in the Fields (next to Trafalgar Square) in 1692. The crypt is now a cafeteria, and the exact grave location has been lost. Interestingly his famous collaborator, Robert Hooke, has also had his grave lost. Originally he was buried at St Helens Bishopgate (next to the Gherkin in the City). However all the graves were dug up and reburied out at the City of London cemetery in the north-east of London. There is a memorial to St Helens Bishopsgate, but not to Robert Hooke. Westminster Abbey and St Pauls have only recently installed memorials to Hooke.

5. Daniel Solander... was the main (Linnaen-trained) naturalist on Captain Cook's famous Endeavour (1768-71) voyage, being employed by Joseph Banks. He was organising the collections in Soho Square when he suddenly died of a stroke in 1782, aged 49.

6. Joseph Banks... longest ever serving President of the Royal Society. He ran a virtual government ministry of science out of his home in Soho Square. He died in 1820 and did not want his tomb to be visited, requesting a private burial. in St Leonard's Church, Heston (near Heathrow airport). The exact location of the grave is unknown. There is now a memorial plaque on the inside church wall, but the church is rarely open to visitors.

The far eastern end of Westminster Abbey

7. Oliver Cromwell... was buried at the very end of the Henry VII Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey but Charles II had the corpse dug up in 1661, hanged and his head displayed on a pole for almost 25 years. His head is reputed to be in Cambridge. The whereabouts of the body is unknown.

Other once-famous people who have had the exact locations of their graves lost: Emma Hamilton, William Hamilton, Arthur Philip, Archibald Menzies, Thomas Newcomen, Samuel Wallis, and William Blake

The rectangle is purported to be the location of the grave of William Blake at Bunhill Fields, close to Daniel Defoe's grave

The faded, fallen tombstone of naturalist Archibald Menzies at Kensal Green

The St Helens Bishopsgate memorial in the City of London cemetery where Robert Hooke's body was placed in the 19th century

The Really Big Questions

Why blog about the universe, instead of some other topic?

It's quite simple. There is no other topic.

Galaxies like grains of sand in this Hubble Ultra Deep Field image

The big questions left for science to answer can be counted on one hand. Once these five questions have been answered, those proposing that science has come to an end will have a strong case. It may be just that the rate of discovery is slowing. The five questions are:

1. What is the origin of the universe? It's probable that this question isn't even stated correctly. We're always told 'what came before the Big Bang' is a meaningless question due to the elastic and contingent nature of time. It is also possible that the 'why' in 'why is there something rather than nothing' and 'what is the meaning of the universe' are also meaningless, two of the many examples in philosophy where questions can be stated that are grammatically and logically correct, but irrational nonetheless e.g. what is the meaning of a cloud?

When formulating these fundamental questions, one should be careful in expunging all presuppositions. 'What is the meaning of life' presupposes that there is a meaning to know. 'Why is there something rather than nothing' presupposes that something needs a greater degree of explanation than nothing. Why should this be the case when there are mathematical or logical truths that exist independently of the universe? Isn't nothing more improbable than something? Peter Atkins, in his new book On Being, has playfully speculated that the universe arose ex nihilo out of some Platonic or Euclidean mathematical axioms. Any universe that is logically possible will exist by necessity. The use of the term universe can be sufficiently broad to include multiverses that vary in their physical constants and laws.
In any case, one thing we can be sure of is that we're unlikely to resolve this in our lifetimes, possibly ever.
That was the hard one. Now lets move on to the 'easy' questions.

2. How can the subjective experience of consciousness arise from inanimate matter? Our brains are just specific combinations of protons arranged in C, O, H, N, Ca, K, etc configurations. Is consciousness simply some emergent function of specific complexity? Any materialist has to agree. Will a sufficiently complex computer be self-aware? Is agency an illusion i.e. an afterglow our brains give us just to delude us into thinking we're calling the shots? We don't even know how to formulate the question correctly or even have a consensus on how to tackle this issue e.g. mapping the neural correlates of consciousness or AI research or studying stroke victims or genetic differences between primates and humans?

3. How did life get started? We think we know what the answer looks like: some auto-catalysing molecule that existed in some deep-sea vent environment (white smoker, black smoker) that was subject to high pH gradients, high temperature gradients, high pressure gradients, and lots of trace elements passing through concentrating microtubules and mixing over hundreds of millions of years sometime about 3.5 - 4 billion years ago.

4. Is there life elsewhere in the universe? Sending probes to detect bacterial life below the Martian regolith or beneath the Europan ice sheath will be the most likely opportunity for discovering ET life in our own solar system. We may also detect free oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets within a few decades, a strong indicator of life, but not conclusive. The present consensus seems to be that the universe is teeming with bacterial life (as bacteria is hardy and got started on Earth relatively quickly) while intelligent life may be rare (because it only happened once on Earth and very late in the game, and because SETI haven't detected any signals yet). It all depends how rare the Earth and our solar system are (e.g. stability of the sun, planetary configuration, presence of the Moon, tectonics, size & composition of the Earth, galactic habitable zone, etc). The SETI Institute figure that once a proper 20 year broadband survey is complete (2030s), we'll have a better idea of how to constrain the many probabilities of the Drake equation.

5. What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy? Even though we embarrassingly don't know what 96% of the universe is made of, it's still only two mysteries. Dark matter will probably be solved first in the next few decades e.g. probably just some form of ghostly neutrino-like sub-atomic or super-symmetric particle.

Questions 2-5 may be possible in principle. In practice, perhaps we can only hope for partial, inconclusive, and unsatisfactory answers to questions 3-5 in our lifetimes. Some may take centuries to resolve. If that's so, we'll just have to get used to living with uncertainty with no foreseeable prospect of resolution to these questions. There will still be relatively minor problems to address: can we cure ageing, can we get off this planet once the sun gets too hot, and can we solve our energy needs?

How has the internet changed your thinking?

EDGE Annual Question 2010 – How has the internet changed your thinking?

John Brockman presiding over an EDGE event at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2007

In January 2010,  über-impresario John Brockman posted the above question on his World Question Centre part of his Edge site. As usual, dozens of his regular respondents (Dawkins, Pinker, Eno, etc) answered with paragraph-length answers. It's a worthwhile browse....

Generally, opinions are divided between those who praise the internet because:

·         Web 2.0 interactivity: comments, feedback, dialogue not monologue

·         Knowledge to all, democratic, power to the people

·         Ideas spread fast

·         Instant access to vast amount of information (ultimate library)

·         Instant communication

·         Wiki collaborations

·      Luddites who reject the internet are frozen in time (intellectually speaking), perpetually before 1995 unless they read a lot of books, while the internet-savy accelerate

And those that suggest caution with regards to the internet

·         Wastes a lot of time (ephemeral news, distractions, digital deluge)

·         Need to unplug to have deep thoughts

·         Social inclusiveness can give a voice to all the crackpots, trolls & other scum

·         No substitute for face-to-face interactions

·         Anonymity breeds hate

·         Big Brother – government/corporations reading emails

·        No permanent record (emails deleted, online photographs only exist in a virtual intangible world).

·         Can’t outsource all your memory. Still need to know what to look up to get precise details on, in the same way that you roughly need to know how a word is spelt before trying to look up precisely how it’s spelt in the dictionary.

A book was published with all the responses for people who don't want to read long text on screen nor print out hundreds of pages.

Last year, I summarised some of the respondents' points in a WORD document which I'll copy-and-paste below. Some of the points may not make sense, as they are a summary-of-a-summary. With time, I'll tidy this up.

Read more »

The Shelley Gang

In light of the 'Frankenfestival' centred on the National Theatre's Frankenstein play there are a number of sites around London significant to Percy and Mary Shelley. The connections among the Shelley - Godwin - Wollstonecraft - Clairmont - Byron circle are dizzying, so strap yourself in. These are only a few. One could  expand these links further to include Thomas Paine, Leigh Hunt, Joseph Johnson, John Murray, and Samuel Coleridge.

Firstly, there's an English Heritage blue plaque memorialising Percy Shelley on the corner of Poland Street and Noel Street in Soho, where he lived in 1811 before he met Mary Godwin.


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The Marchmont Association has also installed one of its blue plaques on north Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury (near the corner of Tavistock Place) where both Percy and Mary lived in early 1816 before they left for Lake Geneva with Lord Byron. It was Mary Godwin's step-sister, Claire Clairmont (then pregnant to Byron) who had the idea to move to Switzerland.


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Percy Shelley used to visit Mary in early 1814 at William Godwin's house in Skinner Street in east London. There is nothing to see there now. The Somers Town house where Mary Shelley was born in 1797 has been demolished and Oakshott Court estate is built upon the location of the 18th century housing village called The Polygon. There is a brown plaque on the Werrington Street side of Oakshott Court estate (near Polygon Road) to Mary Wollestonecraft who lived with William Godwin in 1797 for a few short months before dying in childbirth.


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There is also a blue plaque at 24 Chester Square Belgravia where Mary Shelley died in 1851. It was here that her son, Percy Florence Shelley, met Jane St John, who became the fierce guardian of the Shelley legacy.


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Perhaps the most significant London site to the entire Shelley - Godwin - Wollstonecraft - Clairmont circle is the graveyard at St Pancras Old Church just north of the Eurostar terminal. William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft were married here in early 1797. It was also here that Percy first courted Mary with young Claire as chaperone, beside the grave of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, in 1814. William Godwin was here buried in 1836. His second wife, Mary Jane Clairemont (nee Vial), mother of Claire Clairmont, is still buried there in the same grave.


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Jane St John (later Lady Shelley) had the remains of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft exhumed and reburied at St Peters Church, Bournemouth. Later Mary Shelley and her son Percy Florence Shelley were also buried in Bournemouth.


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An interesting footnote to St Pancras Old Church is that Dr John Polidori, who was Byron's doctor and present at the famous mid-June 1816 ghost-writing competition at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, committed suicide in 1821, aged just 25 and is be is buried at St Pancras Old Church. The grave is now lost, probably due to the laying down of railway tracks later in the 19th century. It was Polidori that took Byron's fragment of a Gothic proto-vampire story and published as The Vampyre, the first time that the east European myth had been fused with a seductive aristocrat (modelled on Byron). This was taken up by Bram Stoker in 1897 in Dracula. Thus the June 1816 ghost writing competition was the originator of two of the most pervasive gothic archetypes, Frankenstein and the modern aristocratic vampire.

The old tombstone of Mary Wollstonecraft, is also where William Godwin is buried, as well as second wife Mary Jane Claremont. The writing has faded significantly. Godwin and Wollstonecraft were later reburied in Bournemouth.

Marchmont Street, just north of Tavistock Place

Poland Street, Soho

Old to the West Wind mural in Soho

Map of St Pancras Old Church

Where Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth to her daughter Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), author of Frankenstein.

Brain 2.0 - a cognitive upgrade

Evolutionary psychologists have long lamented our Pleistocene brains, developed over millennia hunting on the east African savannah. They delight in explaining its shortcomings and revel in highlighting its incompatibility with modern civilisation, thus explaining much of today's existential malaise. Light is shed on all manner of social ills: why are uncomfortable in crowded urban areas, why we play office politics, how confirmation bias leads to bad decision-making, how status anxiety drives much of our behaviour including conspicuous consumption, why men and women have different strategies of sexual opportunism, why we crave fat & sugar even in sedentary lifestyles, why we delight in gossip, why we're superstitious, why we have trouble learning maths and statistics, why can't grasp the quantum world, why our number of Facebook friends are typically in the 100-150 range, and why we possess an innate tribalism that divides the world into in-group and out-groups. There are many more, summarised in various new titles.

This year, John Brockman's EDGE website invites public intellectuals from around the world an opportunity to respond to this dysfunction. It poses a question: 'what scientific concept would improve everyone's cognitive tooklit?'

An annual question is posited every January on the site, and then a book is published later with all the responses. All of John Brockman's regulars are there: Dawkins, Pinker, Ramachandran, Harris, etc.

If there's a general take-home message, it's that the scientific method should be applied to all decision-making, particularly in politics. Science waits for evidence, theories are subject to falsification, and the scientific method is the antithesis to ideology. At present, the way the mainstream media and the two-party political system operate, any indecisiveness is interpreted as 'lacking conviction' or 'flip-flopping'. Leaders must gaze thoughtfully and have an unswerving vision. He must be a statesman, stand tall, and lead from the front. The very idea that a political party can have its doctrine determined a priori e.g. social democrat or free market, rather than as a result of experiment, observation and experiment reveals a fundamental contradiction between our political system and the scientific method. Conviction is deemed a positive political trait, but in the sciences, it is the start of a slippery slope into dogma and closed-mindedness.

Reading through the paragraph-long responses of Edge's annual question is a superb way to be introduced to a variety of interesting ideas from some of the sharpest minds in a short time. Too often an interesting idea is padded into any entire book. In a way, Edge's annual question is a summary of over 100 books in the space of just one. I've done my own summary-of-a-summary below, copied in from a WORD document, so the formatting may not be 100% compatible.

Overall summary:

Scientific reasoning should be applied to everything (evidence, replicability, seeking out falsifiability, etc) including politics, religion, philosophy, sociology, etc.
Scientism: everything is ultimately a scientific question. The downside is that we'd be living in an 'autistic world' with no art, fiction, fantasy, or religion as they're all frivolous without any underlying evidence and liable to muddy our thinking.
Decisions: difficult to make decisions as each choice has to be run through a whole lot of new filters to ensure it’s untainted by bias, cognitive dissonance, inconsistency, political & economic ideology, religion, groupthink, etc. Be careful to neutralise arguments from authority and tradition, and other residual cognitive dysfunctions of our Pleistocene brains.
Politics: inconsistency with the media image (deemed necessary) of having vision, decisiveness, leadership, values, etc. Incompatible with ‘wait & see where the evidence takes us'.
Statistical illiteracy: one of the problems undermining decision-making
Other cognitive tools: don’t just describe what something is, also be clear what it is not. Otherwise the description is too foggy, vague, obscure

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The Grant Museum - new location for old-style displays

UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology is once again open to the public, after moving across the street to more spacious premises at the corner of Gower and University Street in Bloomsbury, London.

Its new home is an old library, and a variety of animal and hominid skeletons grin widely as they preside over visitors from the balcony – not unlike a scene from a Hammer Horror movie, or perhaps the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Anatomical curiosities on display include an eyebrow-raising walrus penis bone, a narwhal tusk, Tasmanian tiger and devil skeletons, dodo remains, a large jar of preserved baby moles, and a hefty brain coral reassuringly labelled, “This is not a brain”.

The room is dominated by its largest displays – a quagga, a giant deer skull with suitably enormous antlers, a mammoth tusk, a dugong, a tiger, an Asian elephant skull and a one-horned rhino.

Despite some new features such as a series of interactive iPad displays that invite visitors to comment on topics such as animal conservation and the role of science in society, it still has a 19th century feel to it. There are no plasma displays, cartoons for visiting school groups, or animatronic dinosaurs. 























The new space allows the Grant Museum to hold regular movie screenings, lectures and events aimed at all age groups. The event listing can be found here. Museum staff are also engaged in research, and you can follow some of their activities on the Grant Museum blog.
Click below to see the Grant Museum’s relocation.
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Peter Atkins rocks the RI

Peter Atkins answers questions after his talk on the limits of science at the Royal Institution on Tuesday 22nd March 2011

The famous horseshoe-shaped lecture theatre of the Royal Institution was almost full for Oxford Chemist Peter Atkins to address the issue of the limits of science. But instead of giving a talk, he simply read passages from his new book, On Being, including most the prologue and selections from various chapters.

Atkins, whose ex-wife is ex-director of the RI, was introduced by Ian Douglas from The Telegraph. The take-home message was that there are no limits to science. In principle, science can address all the 'big questions' once ring-fenced by religion i.e. the origin of the universe, of life, of morality, of consciousness, and of spiritual experience. He then faced some hostile questions from a philosopher, a creationist, a Christian Scientist, etc and others who are skeptical about Atkins' hard-core scientism stance. Each brief exchange brought a muttering or approval or disapproval from the audience depending on their allegiances. Atkins is known as a brave straight-talking atheist that doesn't disguise his sentiments in politically-correct language, flowery sophistry, or accommodationalist qualifications. It's not just religious thinking that Atkins has no patience for, it's all the hand-waving in academic philosophy which he believes has an intrinsic pessimism that undermines the case for science.


As an audience event, however, it was a somewhat disappointing evening. No matter what one's opinions on the content, sixty minutes of reading from a book is inexcusable in this age of modern science communication. There is a world of difference in the quality of engagement between written prose and speaking to an audience. 

See Peter Atkins discuss his book On Being here

Haunting dead scientists

  There are more big names in the history of science at Westminster Abbey than any other place in the world (Paris' Pantheon and Göttingen's cemeteries would be distant second and third). Within a few metres of each other in the north-east corner of the nave lie Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, Lord Kelvin, JJ Thomson, John Herschel, John Hunter, and Charles Lyell. There are also memorials to Howard Florey, William Herschel, Michael Faraday, Paul Dirac, James Clark Maxwell, James Joule, Joseph Lister, Joseph Hooker, Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley, Alfred Russell Wallace, Humphrey Davy, and Lord Rayleigh.

Once you enter via the Great North Door, the first memorial you encounter is Robert Hooke's diamond-shaped floor stone in front of the Sacrarium's stairs (left, or north, of centre). It's easy to miss and is not on the audioguide. The stone is next to his old Westminster schoolmaster Richard Busby. There is also a 2009 memorial to Hooke in the crypt of St Pauls. Hooke was originally buried at St Helens Bishopsgate (opposite the Gherkin) but all the graves there were moved to the City of London cemetery (Manor Park) in 1892. There is a memorial to St Helens Bishopsgate there, but no mention of Robert Hooke. Another memorial exists on The Monument near London Bridge.

Before you leave the North Transept, one memorial and grave of tangential note to the history of science is that of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. This was the statesman uncle of Robert FitzRoy, Captain of the Beagle on its famous circumnavigation with Charles Darwin in the 1830s. Castlereagh represented Britain at the Congress of Vienna after the fall of Napoleon and infamously committed suicide, instilling in Fitzroy a fear that he would do the same, which he did after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The memorial to Castlereagh is prominent on the west side of the North Transept near the information desk, but the gravestone itself has faded. It's right in the middle of the main thoroughfare adjacent to William Wilberforce. To the left of Wilberforce is his friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (also faded), and underneath William Pitt is Castlereagh's gravestone. Robert FitzRoy himself is buried at All Saints Church in Upper Norwood in south London.

Next, if you follow the main tourist route of the Abbey east towards the Henry VII Lady Chapel and immediately turn left and enter the Chapel of St John the Evangelist and pass through St Michaels Chapel (marked 4 on the audioguide) and walk to the far north wall (known as the St Andrews Chapel you'll see wall memorials to Lord Rayleigh (buried on his family plot) and Humphrey Davy. Lord Rayleigh, who's name was John Strutt, was responsible for the discovery of argon and the reason for why the sky is blue (Rayleigh scattering). He's buried in the family church plot at Terling Place, Witham in Essex. Below Rayleigh's wall memorial plaque is one to Humphrey Davy, who is buried in Geneva. On the way out of these three small chapels in North Transept, take note of the wall memorial plaque of John Franklin on the west wall near the entrance.


There's more monarchs than scientists in the east of the Abbey as you follow the tourist route. There are two kings who are especially famous for fostering science, Charles II and George III. Unfortunately there are no tombs to any of Stuart monarchs, and the best you can find is that of a tiny diamond-shaped floor stone memorial to Charles II at the end of the section that houses Mary Queen of Scots (south Henry VII Lady Chapel). Under his patronage, the Royal Society was established in the 1660s. George III is buried in the crypt of St Georges Chapel at Windsor Castle and can not be visited by the public.


Once you loop around to Poets Corner, have a look for the white plaque to John Pringle, President of the Royal Society, high on the west wall. He was a regular travelling companion of Benjamin Franklin. Exit the Abbey via the Cloisters where you'll find two gleaming new memorial plaques to Edmund Halley and Captain Cook on the south wall. Halley is buried at St Margarets at Blackheath in the same tomb as fellow Astronomer Royal John Pond. The original tombstone of Halley is now displayed near the entrance to Flamsteed's House at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. There is no grave of Captain Cook, his body having been hacked to pieces and eaten in Hawaii in 1779. Some recovered remains were buried at sea.


Re-enter the nave of the Abbey and walk around to the northern wall and turn right towards the North Choir Aisle. At the end are the biggest names: Charles Darwin is under a very plain grey gravestone next to his friend John Herschel (son of William Herschel). Near the centre lies Isaac Newton below one of the most ornate memorials in the abbeys. Note the scientific motifs. Have a good look around here and see how many names you can identify. As a general rule, the rectangular gravestone indicate a burial and a diamond-shaped stone represents a memorial, although this practice is not always followed. Paul Dirac is buried in Florida, James Clerk Maxwell is on his family plot in Scotland, and Michael Faraday is in Highgate's west cemetery (special permission needs to be sought to visit it). Hooker is at Kew together with his father. Joseph Lister and John Harrison (H4 clock) are in Hampstead and Alfred Russell Wallace is in Broadstone, Dorset.

Don't forget to look in the North Choir Aisle where the composers Purcell and Ralph Vaughan Williams are buried as there are several scientists' memorials on the inner wall.


Unlike the other great cathedrals of Europe, photography is not allowed in Westminster Abbey. This seems mean-spirited seeing as so many tourists would like to and are constantly told 'No Photography' by some of attendants who seem to have infinite energy for this game all day long. Other attendants don't seem to mind if you sneak a quick discreet shot of your favourite scientist, especially possible if you hang an SLR around your next and it's a bright day so you don't need to use a flash. :)

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