Women's Day March 8: Baret the Botanist

The first woman to circumnavigate the world was an eighteenth-century botanist. True, Jeanne Baret lacked a formal, academic education. Nevertheless, she became recognized, if somewhat belatedly, with a government pension and still more recently with that ultimate in scientific acknowledgement, a plant species. Her early life is clouded in mystery. Born in Burgundy, then an impoverished region of France, on 27 July 1740, she was unusual in being literate, uncommon to the area and time for a female. Of her parent and possible siblings, nothing is known. It has been established that by the early 1760s she was servant to naturalist Philibert Commerçon. Following his wife's death soon after their marriage, Jeanne became his housekeeper. She had also become his lover, giving birth to his son.