Science Buff Lecture: Andrea Wulf

Step into the extraordinary life of George Forster, a remarkable young naturalist, writer and revolutionary whose ideas about humanity, equality and freedom challenged the dominant worldviews of eighteenth-century Europe. In 1772, at the age of seventeen, he accompanied Captain Cook on his second circumnavigation of the globe and travelled deep into the Antarctic Circle and across the South Pacific. A gifted observer, linguist and artist, Forster studied people and cultures without prejudice, returning with a deep-seated belief in the equality of all humans. By his early twenties he was celebrated across Europe, using his fame to advocate for freedom and human rights and against empire, racism and slavery. Pulled into the vortex of the French Revolution, he became a leader of the short-lived Republic of Mainz but was forced into exile in Paris during the Reign of Terror.

 In The Traveler Andrea Wulf paints a portrait of a remarkable, passionate figure unbound by place, people or establishment and vividly conveys his extraordinary quest to find what connects us rather than what sets us apart.