Banks Sir Joseph

Banks, Sir Joseph, botanical collector, was born in 1743. He was educated at Harrow, at Eton, where he acquired a taste for botany, and at Christ Church, Oxford. Having ample private means, he devoted himself to travel, visiting Newfoundland and Labrador in 1764 to collect plants and insects, and taking Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus, with him on Cook's first voyage round the world between 1768 and 1771. In 1772 they went to Iceland, the Hebrides, and Staffa, the structure of which Banks was the first to describe. From 1778 till his death in 1820 Banks was President of the Royal Society; in 1781 he was created a baronet, and in 1795 a Knight of the Bath. He bequeathed his valuable library and herbarium to the British Museum.