Date of honorary Fellowship admission: 5 December 1782
Joseph Banks was born in 1743 in London to William Banks and Sarah Bate. He studied botany at Oxford University, although he did not complete his degree. A naturalist, his first major position was on the 1766 expedition to Labrador and Newfoundland. He then took part in the Endeavour voyage of 1768-1771 to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. After his return, he took up a position at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, where he was responsible for greatly increasing its collection, and served as president of the Royal Society from 1778. He was a proponent of the colonisation of Australia and frequently made requests for his collections to the British there. This included a request for human remains, which led to Governor Philip Gidley King sending him the head of Aboriginal leader Pemulwuy. Pemulwuy’s skull was later lost and remains missing as of 2026. Banks died in 1820.
