Endnotes
Endnotes
1 (p. 5) Humphry Davy... Saint Claire-Deville: British chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) discovered several chemical elements. German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) contributed crucially to the Earth sciences. British explorer of the Arctic Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) discovered the Northwest Passage. British astronomer Sir Edward Sabine (1788-1883) traveled to the Arctic and was a pioneer in magnetism. Antoine-César Becquerel (1788-1878) and his son, Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel ( 1820-1891 ), were both physicists. Jacques-Joseph Ebelmen (misspelled “Ebelman” by Verne) (1814-1852) was a French chemist. Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) invented the kaleidoscope. Jean-Baptiste-Andre Dumas (1800-1884) was a French chemist. French zoologist Henri Milne-Edwards (1800-1885), professor at the Sorbonne and director of the Museum d‘Histoire Naturelle in Paris, researched crustaceans, mollusks, and corals. Henri-Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville (1818-1881) was a French chemist; his brother Charles Sainte-Claire Deville (1814-1876) was a French geologist who published a book on the Stromboli volcano.
2 (p. 6) Grauben: Verne uses a spelling for the goddaughter’s name that could not exist in German. Some translators have therefore chosen to normalize the name to “Gräuben,” but this variation still does not render a name that would be likely to be used in German. For this reason, Verne’s original spelling is preserved here.
3 (p. 14) “Arne Saknussemm ... a famous alchemist!”: Verne may have based this character on the Icelandic philologist Arni Magnússon (1663-1730), who specialized in the early history and literature of Scandinavia and built up an extensive collection of books and manuscripts from Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. He was not an alchemist, however.
4 (p. 14) “Avicenna... Paracelsus”: The Iranian doctor and philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) exerted enormous influence, especially in the areas of philosophy and medicine. British philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon (1220-1292) studied alchemy as well as mathematics, astronomy, and optics; he was the first European to give a detailed account of the manufacture of gunpowder. Catalan writer and mystic Ramon Llull ( 1232/33-1315/ 16) proposed a general theory of knowledge in his Ars magna ( 1305-1308). The German-Swiss doctor and alchemist known as Paracelsus, whose real name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim ( 1493-1541 ), was responsible for giving chemistry a crucial role in medicine.
5 (p. 34) “a visit that the celebrated chemist ... born nineteen years later”: By this accounting, Axel was born in 1844 and he would be nineteen at the time of the expedition in 1863; Uncle Lidenbrock, who Verne has said was fifty in 1863, would have been only twelve years old in 1825—a rather young age to be receiving visits from famous scientists!
6 (p. 57) “Olafsen ... scholars aboard the Reine Hortense”: Icelandic poet and natural historian Eggert Ólafsson (1726-1768) carried out a substantial scientific and cultural survey of his country from 1752 to 1757 and recorded the results in his Travels in Iceland (1772); together with Bjarni Pálsson (pseudonym Povelsen), he undertook the first ascent of the Snaefells volcano in 1757. Uno von Troil (1746-1803), archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden, traveled to Iceland in 1772 and published a report on his journey in 1777. French naturalist Joseph Paul Gaimard (1796-1858) undertook expeditions to Iceland in 1835 and 1836 and published a nine-volume study as a result of this journey, with the collaboration of Eugène Robert (1806-1879). French navigator Jules Alphonse Rene Poret de Blosseville and members of an expedition team, to whom Verne refers simply as the “scholars,” sailed to Iceland and Greenland aboard the Reine Hortense in 1833 and disappeared in the Arctic.
7 (p. 162) leptotherium ... mericotherium: Verne seems to have invented these names. There is an orchid genus but no animal called leptotherium, which combines the Greek words for “slender” and “wild beast.” The name mericotherium is similar to those of such other prehistoric species as the hyracotherium, a small ancestor of the horse, but has no specific zoological referent.
8 (p. 192) Boucher de Perthes ... by the ages: Verne moves events that actually took place in the 1830s and 1840s to the 1860s. Jacques Boucher de Perthes, an archaeologist, was director of the custom house at Abbeville in France and made important discoveries of Stone Age tools in the area that demonstrated the ancient origins of the human species. His research remained controversial until 1859, when it was supported by British scientists.
9 (p. 192) Falconer, Busk, Carpenter: Hugh Falconer (1808-1865) was a Scottish naturalist and paleontologist. British surgeon, zoologist, and paleontologist George Busk (1807-1886) had a specialization in polyzoa, a fossil marine species, and an interest in vertebrate fossils. William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885) trained as a medical doctor and published in diverse fields, including mental physiology, microscopy, marine biology, and religion, with particular achievements in marine zoology.
10 (p. 194) “I know the story... the pre-adamites of Scheuchzer”: Pausanias, a Greek scholar and writer from the second century A.D., tells the story of a man who claimed to have found the skeleton of the Greek hero Ajax; he described it as gigantic and said the kneecap was the size of a pentathlon discus, which would make it more than 7 inches wide. Asterius is a mythological giant whose tomb Pausanias claimed to have seen. Herodotus, a Greek historian from the fifth century B.C., reports the story of Orestes’ body being found by a Spartan who simply takes the word of a blacksmith for the authenticity of the remains. Polyphemus is a one-eyed giant who imprisons Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey; Trapani and Palermo are cities in Sicily. Felix Platter (1536-1614; spelled “Plater” in Verne’s text) was a Swiss doctor who identified bones found near Lucerne as those of a giant, but they were actually the remains of a mammoth. Jean de Chassanion (1531-1598) was a French clergyman and author of a book on giants in human history. Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was a French naturalist who examined bones said to be those of Teutobochus, king of the Cimbrians, and found them to belong to the elephant relative deinotherium; the Cimbrians were a Germanic tribe. Peter Camper (1722-1789; spelled “Campet” in Verne’s text) was a Dutch anatomist best known for his work on anatomy and human races. In 1725 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733), a Swiss naturalist, claimed to have discovered the fossil remains of one of the victims of the biblical flood; in the nineteenth century, Georges Cuvier identified these fossils to be those of a giant salamander.
11 (p. 197) Hoffmann’s fantastic character who has lost his shadow: In the short story “The Wonderful Tale of Peter Schlemihl” (1814), by German Romantic author Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), the protagonist sells his shadow. E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), another German writer of the period and friend of Chamisso’s, mentions the story in his own “Adventures of New Year’s Eve” ( 1815).