Jeanne Baret: the first woman to circumnavigate the globe

The voyages of scientific discovery conjure in our minds images of Sir Hans Sloane bioprospecting in Jamaica in 1687 or Joseph Banks voyaging aboard the Endeavour to Tahiti and New Zealand in 1768. But women also set foot on rickety and unsure ocean-going vessels in the 18th century in the service of science. The German-born Maria Sibylla Merian voyaged from Amsterdam to Surinam in South America in 1699 to search for exotic caterpillars. She sought one that would produce a thread to rival silk, a costly and much sought-after fabric in early-modern Europe. In the process, she produced one of the most celebrated 18th-century natural history books.