John Edmonstone is known as ‘the man who taught Darwin taxidermy’.
Edmonstone, a formerly enslaved man from Guyana, was living in Edinburgh when he met a young Darwin, teaching him the skill of taxidermy that would prove crucial in contributing evidence to Darwin's developing theory.
The erasure of the stories and contributions of Black people living through the colonial era means there is little detail about Edmonstone’s life and the fullness of his contributions to modern science, but what is known is that he was a renowned taxidermist and naturalist.
Find out more about this fascinating story via the Natural History Museum’s article at nhm.ac.uk/discover/john-edmonstone-the-man-who-taught-darwin-taxidermy.html or download a text-only slide that you can use in your lesson resources.