10 Facts About Daniel Solander

Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.

Daniel Solander was born in Pitea, Norrbotten, Sweden, to Rev Carl Daniel Solander a Lutheran principal, and Magdalena.

In 1768, Daniel Solander gained leave of absence from the British Museum and with his assistant Herman Sporing accompanied Joseph Banks on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean aboard the Endeavour.

Daniel Solander helped make and describe an important collection of Australian plants while the Endeavour was beached at the site of present-day Cooktown for nearly seven weeks, after being damaged on the Great Barrier Reef.

Daniel Solander wrote a manuscript describing all the species collected from New Zealand during the six months the 1768 expedition spent there.

Daniel Solander is buried in the Swedish Section at Brookwood Cemetery.

Daniel Solander's reputation has been profoundly influenced by his limited number of publications and his premature death.

However, Banks clearly had a strong emotional bond with Daniel Solander, met his expenses and even supported his relatives in Sweden.

Daniel Solander invented the book-form box known as the Daniel Solander box which is still used in libraries and archives as the most suitable way of storing prints, drawings, herbarium materials and some manuscripts.

Daniel Solander was associated with Banks in Illustrations of the Botany of Captain Cook's Voyage Round the World, and his The Natural History of Many Curious and Uncommon Zoophytes, Collected by the late John Ellis, was published posthumously.