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Crystal Palace in Sydenham. Undated postcard 61 showing glasshouse, gardens, and fountains.

Crystal Palace Company – First Annual General Meeting 1853

Crystal Palace Company formed in 1852 to purchase the glasshouse and remains of the 1851 Great Exhibition and somehow – no plan was clear at the start – restart it [...]

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs | Professor Joe Cain

Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World (Crystal Palace Guide 15) | EGP

Richard Owen’s original guide to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and displayed in Crystal Palace Park, Sydenham, London since 1854. These life-sized sculptures of prehistoric “monsters” [...]

Ernst Mayr’s (1942) Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist. Title page

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

Ernst Mayr‘s (1904-2005) book, Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist was published in 1942 by Columbia University Press in their Columbia Biological Series. This [...]

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. […]

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, […]

HPSC0044 Science and the Publishing Industry

The publishing industry is enormous. It shapes science communication in fundamental ways. This module investigates publishing. How does it work? How does it enable, constrain, and challenge science communication? The module covers a wide range […]

HPSC0028 History of Life Sciences

A historical survey of the biological sciences from the Enlightenment to the present. What are the big names and big ideas? How were they received at the time and appropriated later? Who’s been ignored and […]

Vernon Kellogg Headquarters Nights 9781906267322 Euston Grove Press | soldiers in the trenches during World War 1

Darwinism or Militarism? Headquarters Nights (Vernon Kellogg) | EGP

Headquarters Nights was the 1917 account by Vernon Kellogg of conversations and experiences at the headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium during World War 1, following one man’s transformation from an opponent of all wars […]

Evolution. Sewall Wright Taught Me, volume 1. Edited by Joe Cain. ISBN 9781906267025

Evolution: Sewall Wright Taught Me, volume 1 | EGP

Sewall Wright taught throughout his long career. Between 1926-1955, he worked at the University of Chicago. During this time, he developed and taught both undergraduate and graduate courses. By the early 1930s, Wright’s teaching load […]

Eoörnis pterovelox gobiensis (Eoornis) | EGP

Meet Eoörnis (Eoornis), the woofen-poof. As the author explains, ‘Through countless ages and successive civilizations this remarkable bird has been the symbol of speed, stamina, grace of line, proportion of members, and beauty of motion.’ […]

Professor Joe Cain

UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology

Synthesis Period in Evolutionary Studies

Comparing Tempo and Mode (1944) with Major Features (1953) by George Gaylord Simpson

JBS Haldane’s Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection (1924-1934)

New Evidence on Dobzhansky 1936 “Jesup” lectures

Ernst Mayr and the Biology of Birds Exhibit at AMNH

Sewall Wright Taught Me series: Evolution, Genetics, Physiological Genetics | EGP

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Crystal Palace Company – First Annual General Meeting 1853

Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World (Crystal Palace Guide 15) | EGP

GenAI in Research

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

Gideon Mantell’s 1851 Guide to Fossils at British Museum

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HPSC Modules 2026-27