01/20/2026
Do you recognize the artist by the art? If not, it's probably because she's much better known for illustrated stories of wayward bunnies, hedgehog washerwomen, and other animal characters. Beatrix Potter honed her illustrative skills on the natural world and was an avid naturalist in many fields including archaeology, botany, and mycology. She studied fungi at length, debated theories of fungal reproduction with well-respected experts, and even wrote a paper on the topic that was presented by one such expert, George Massee, to the Linnean Society of London in 1897. Potter was not allowed to attend or read her paper--women were prohibited from the society at the time.
When it's discussed at all, Potter's skill as a scientist and scientific illustrator is often something of a throwaway, as if it were a fun bit of trivia, but to Potter it clearly wasn't trivial. She made efforts to hone her skills, work with peers, and contribute meaningful data to the larger scientific conversation that would be admirable even today, but she was doing all of that in the face of rampant sexism and barriers to access. Potter was a white woman of means living in England, which afforded her an unusual amount of privilege, but if she hadn't fought to get her children's books published and become a household name, it's still likely her work as a scientist would have been entirely lost to history.
