Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820)

Sir Joseph Banks inherited his father’s estates in Lincolnshire and considerable wealth in 1761. His first voyage of discovery was to the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador on HMS Niger, and on his return to London in 1767, he was elected a member of the Royal Society at the age of just 23.

When the Society proposed an expedition to observe the transit of Venus in the Pacific in 1769, Banks was able to finance his own team of scientists and assistants, including the botanist Daniel Solander and the artist Sydney Parkinson. HMS Endeavour under James Cook left England in August 1768.

Banks’s extensive botanical collections formed the basis of the herbarium kept at his home in Soho Square. Instead of joining Cook’s subsequent voyages, he mounted his own expedition to Iceland, the Hebrides and Orkney in 1772. This was his last major voyage; thereafter he exercised his influence from home.

Banks became the friend of George III, with whom he shared an interest in agriculture and rural affairs, and from 1773 he acted as unofficial director of the Royal Gardens at Kew. Banks organised the first Kew collectors, including Francis Masson, James Bowie and Allan Cunningham, and specimens arrived from all over the growing British empire. Under his supervision Kew became one of the foremost botanical gardens in the world.

Banks was involved in most British voyages of discovery of his day, including the Bounty voyage under William Bligh, 1787-1789, Bligh’s later voyage in HMS Providence, and Matthew Flinders’s circumnavigation of Australia, 1800-1805. He also organised the introduction of the first sheep into Australia.

In 1778, Banks was elected President of the Royal Society, a position he held for the remainder of his life.

Further information

Banks Archive (based at the Natural History Museum)

Sir Joseph Banks Building (housing Kew’s Economic Botany Collections).

Several portraits of Sir Joseph Banks can be found in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery.

Further information about Banks and his contribution to the world of science can be found in Sir Joseph Banks: A Global Perspective, published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

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