Homepage | Professor Joe Cain

Bernissart Iguanodons in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels

The Dinosaur Gallery in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (Brussels Museum of Natural History) includes the famous Bernissart Iguanodons. This consists of thirty complete or nearly complete skeletons [...]

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. 1854 Photograph.

Queen Victoria Visited Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Crystal Palace Dinosaurs several times during the site’s construction in 1853 and 1854. In November 1853, the Royals visited the Model-Room, or Studio, of [...]

Illustration of "ring species" concept, or Rassenkreis

Society for the Study of Speciation: Bibliographic Analysis using LLM

I provide data for an LLM-based analysis of the short-lived Society for the Study of Speciation (SSS), organised by Alfred Emerson, through three documents. […]

Gideon Mantell (1851) Petrifactions and Their Teaching, frontispiece, Notoris mantelli

Gideon Mantell’s 1851 Guide to Fossils at British Museum

Gideon Mantell’s 1851 guide to fossils at British Museum, including Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, Hylaeosaurus, marine reptiles, and more. […]

HPSC0010 History of Modern Science

This page is in development. Please return in September 2026. Until then, please enjoy these cartoons. What are these?

HPSC0011 STS Perspectives on Big Problems

The theme for 2026-27 will be “Food”. “Science and technology are two of the most important drivers of our world. As a field of study, STS is organised to interpret those activities in the past, […]

HPSC0097 Research Project

Postgraduate taught students in UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) undertake summer research projects resulting in dissertations or research reports. Professor Joe Cain supervises some students in this work, as do all academic […]

Oxford Museum of Natural History exterior on a bright, sunny day | ProfJoeCain

Oxford Museum of Natural History Meets Gothic Revival | EGP

A guided tour through key architectural and design philosophies underpinning the Oxford Museum of Natural History by Henry Acland, who played a key role in the design of the new university science museum in the […]

Tiger in UCL Grant Museum of Zoology - cover for Cain - No Ordinary Space

No Ordinary Space: UCL Grant Museum | EGP

UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology moved to the Thomas Lewis Room in UCL’s Rockefeller Building in 2011. No Ordinary Space is a book designed to answer popular historical questions about the room, the building, and […]

Brown Dog and His Memorial (Battersea, London) | EGP

In 1907, London medical students protested over a statue raised to a little brown dog. Bonfires burned late into the night. Large groups marched through the streets clashing with police. Gangs were arrested trying to […]

Professor Joe Cain

UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology

Synthesis Period in Evolutionary Studies

Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) by Ernst Mayr

Exploring the Borderlands of Evolutionary Synthesis

Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937) by Theodosius Dobzhansky

Patricide in the Repeated Assassination of George Gaylord Simpson

Columbia Biological Series, 1894-1974

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Bernissart Iguanodons in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels

Queen Victoria Visited Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

GenAI in Research

Society for the Study of Speciation: Bibliographic Analysis using LLM

Gideon Mantell’s 1851 Guide to Fossils at British Museum

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HPSC Modules 2026-27