Jeanne Baret

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Jeanne Baret
with a Phrygian (worker) cap

Jeanne Baret ( pseudonym Jean Baré ) (* July 27, 1740 ; † 1807 ) was a French naturalist and botanist .

Baret was a member of the expedition that Louis Antoine de Bougainville led between 1766 and 1769 with the ships La Boudeuse and L'Étoile in the South Pacific. She is probably the first woman to circumnavigate the world; she is certainly the first woman to sail around the world disguised as a man.

Shortly before the ships set out on their voyage from France, she was hired as the alleged valet and assistant to the expedition's botanist , Philibert Commerson . Their camouflage was necessary because the French Navy forbade the presence of women on their ships at the time. Baret himself describes Bougainville as “an excellent botanist who accompanied Commerson with great strength and courage even on the most difficult excursions”.

Apparently no one on the crew noticed that it was a woman. Bougainville notes in his log that the indigenous people of Tahiti immediately recognized them as women. She had to get back on the ship to protect herself from the excited Tahitians.

She told Bougainville that she was 26 or 27 years old, had no parents and was born in Burgundy . You've started to dress as a man, after a trial had lost, she sat financially under pressure and in Paris working as a valet for a gentleman. She hired because she was curious about the world.

In Mauritius , Baret and Commerson separated from the expedition and stayed there for almost five years to explore the island more closely, where they collected more than 6000 species of plants, which are now in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle . When her companion fell ill, Beret independently collected and determined the flora in Mauritius. Commerson died in 1773 and Baret returned to Paris. She incorporated the collection made on the trip into the French collection already built up by Commerson. This was a great contribution to botany.

In his will, drawn up before the trip, Commerson left his household and his botanical collections to Jeanne Baret, so that they should go to the royal "Cabinet des Estampes" in an orderly manner. It is believed that Commerson and Baret knew each other before the trip, Commerson knew the truth about Baret's gender, and they were a couple.

While more than 70 plants, insects and mollusks were named after Commerson, all of which bear the name commersonii , and the now world-famous bougainvillea species were named after the commander of the expedition, Baret received such an honor only in 2012: at the suggestion of the British author Glynis Ridley, who wrote a study on beret, named Eric Tepe, professor of biology at the University of Utah, a newly discovered nightshade family named Solanum baretiae after her .

Honors

  • On July 27, 2020, Baret was honored for his 280th birthday with a Google Doodle .

literature

  • John Dunmore: Monsieur Baret, first woman around the world (1766–1768) , Heritage press, Auckland 2002, ISBN 0-908708-54-8
  • Milbry Polk, Mary Tiegreen: Women of Discovery - A Celebration of intrepid Women who explored the World. Clarkson Potter, New York 2001 (published in German in 2006 by Frederking & Thaler as women explore the world - discover, research, report. , ISBN 3-89405-520-0 )
  • Glynis Ridley: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe , Crown Publishing Group, December 2010
  • Londa Schiebinger: Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Harvard University Press 2004, ISBN 978-0-674-01487-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Milbry Polk, Mary Tiegreen: Women Explore the World - Discover, Research, Report. P. 41
  2. ^ Glynis Ridley: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe , Crown Publishing Group, December 2010
  3. ↑ Tepe E, Ridley G, Bohs L: A new species of Solanum named for Jeanne Baret, an overlooked contributor to the history of botany . In: Pensoft Publishers (Ed.): PhytoKeys . 8, 2012, pp. 37--47. doi : 10.3897 / phytokeys.8.2101 . Retrieved January 27, 2012.
  4. ↑ Archive link ( memento from January 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on January 4, 2012
    eurekalert.org from January 3, 2012: Jeanne Baret, botanist and first female circumnavigator, finally commemorated in name of new species.
  5. ^ 280th birthday of Jeanne Baret. July 27, 2020, accessed on August 21, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Baret, Jeanne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baré, Jean; Barret, Jeanne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French naturalist and circumnavigator
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1740
DATE OF DEATH 1807