Georg Marcgraf (1610-c. 1644): a German cartographer, astronomer, and naturalist-illustrator in colonial Dutch Brazil

The German scholar Georg Marcgraf was the first trained astronomer in the New World and co-author of the earliest published natural history of Brazil, Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Leiden and Amsterdam 1648) (Fig. 1). Arriving in the Americas in 1638, Marcgraf took his place among a remarkable group of scholars and painters assembled at the Brazilian court of the German count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679), the governor-general of Dutch Brazil from 1637–1644.1 Dutch Brazil was established by the Dutch West India Company (WIC), which was created in 1621 to engage in trade, conquest, and colonisation in the Americas and Africa. Except for Marcgraf, the most important members of the Count's entourage were Dutch and included the painters Albert Eckhout (c. 1610 - c. 1666) and Frans Post (1612–1680) and the physician Willem Piso (1611–1678). The rich group of scientific and visual materials they created are comparable in both scope and importance with the works created by Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges, and others during the Pacific voyages of Captain Cook in the eighteenth century.2 The Count's support of natural history, astronomy, and scientific and ethnographic illustration during his governorship was highly unusual, setting him apart from other colonial administrators and military leaders in the seventeenth century. Indeed, he is responsible for establishing both the first observatory and the first botanical garden in the New World, sparing no expense in creating a princely empire for himself in the Brazilian wilderness.

"Private rooms and back doors in abundance": the illusion of privacy in pornography in seventeenth-century England

This article discusses pornography in seventeenth-century England in relation to the public/private debate. The seventeenth century is seen as bordering a shift from a communal, "public" style of living to a private, confined, inward-looking sensibility discernible from the eighteenth century. The increasing availability and development of a market for pornography, which goes hand in hand with the expansion of print culture, is seen as part of this shift, as it seems to exemplify par excellence the private consumption of printed material for private pleasure. The pornographic literature of the seventeenth century repeatedly invokes the idea of a public/private distinction to produce an eroticised narrative in which the illusion of privacy is constantly breached by the pursuit of voyeuristic pleasure.

Gendering the revolution: language, politics, and the birth of a nation (1789-1795)

Translated by John Galvin and Marie-Claire Vallois

Bibliometric analysis of HRC-supported biomedical publications, 1990 to 1994

AIM

To document changes in the rate and impact of publications resulting from Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) biomedical grants since its inception and to relate the number of publications to Health Priority Areas, fields of research and specific types of grant.

METHODS

All original papers or reviews and editorials published by HRC-supported investigators in peer-refereed journals, from 1990 to 1994, were entered into a bibliographic database.

RESULTS

In this five-year period, researchers receiving HRC biomedical grants published a total of 2094 articles in 623 peer-reviewed journals, of which 1190 (57%) derived from HRC support. Of the publications, 90.2% were original papers; the remainder were reviews or editorials. From 1990 to 1994, there was an increase in the number of HRC-supported publications (p<0.04) but not of those deriving from other support. There was no change in the quality of publications over this period, as reflected by the impact factor (a measure of the number of times that publications in a journal are cited). The majority (62.6%) of publications derived from project grants, however, the average cost per publication was 8.4% higher for project than for programme (multi-investigator) grants. Finally, nearly 40% of HRC publications directly addressed designated health priority areas.

CONCLUSIONS

The present study has examined one aspect of the value for money obtained from the public investment in biomedical research. As the HRC is the major provider of contestable biomedical research funding in New Zealand, bibliometric analysis may be of ongoing value to monitor the effects of changes to the organisation of biomedical research funding in New Zealand.