Chrysalis

Maria Sibylla Merian was born in Germany just thirteen years after Galileo was prosecuted for proclaiming that the earth orbited the sun. But in 1699, at the age of fifty two, she sailed from Europe to the New World on an expedition to study metamorphosis.

It was an unheard-of journey for any naturalist at that time, much less a woman, but Merian undertook it undaunted with only her daughter for company. When she returned, she produced a book that secured her reputation but her accomplishments were later dismissed and then forgotten in the nineteenth century, when scientists feared that they would be discredited if they built on the work of 'amateurs.'

Taking us from golden-age Amsterdam to the sweltering rain forests of Surinam to modern laboratories where Merian's insights fuel a new branch of biology, Kim Todd brings to life an amazing seventeenth-century woman whose boldness and vision would still be exceptional today.