The University of North Carolina Press

148 pp., 7 x 10, 35 illus., appends., notes, index

Monticello Monograph Series

Paper

ISBN  978-1-882886-26-5

Published: September 2009

A Passion for Nature

Thomas Jefferson and Natural History

By Keith Thomson

Thomas Jefferson once wrote to a friend that politics was his "duty" but natural history was his "passion." As this book shows, he was always a man for whom nature was important. With Jefferson's devotion to detailed knowledge, precise calculation, and rational inquiry, natural history related to everything he did--as a farmer, as a philosopher, and as a citizen. For all his gifts in philosophy and politics and his fascination with the American West, Jefferson was never more happy than when at home at Monticello, riding across the fields and experimenting with new crops. The great wonder is that despite his demanding public life he had time to be one of America's first serious students of fossils, botany, climate, geology, and anthropology, among other things.

About the Author

Keith Thomson was a visiting fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies in 2007. He is professor emeritus of natural history at Yale University and senior research fellow of the American Philosophical Society. Author of twelve other books on evolution, paleontology, and the history of science, he was previously professor and dean at Yale, president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and university scientist-in-residence at the New School for Social Research.