John Hunter is recorded in Westminster Abbey, where his remains were ultimately interred, as the founder of scientific surgery: a fair achievement for the youngest son of a Strathclyde farmer. (He should not be confused with the second Governor of New South Wales!)
James Cook, born in the same year and also a farmer's son, achieved a comparable distinction in the annals of exploration.
Joseph Banks, half a generation younger and a typical English gentleman amateur of the eighteenth century, had a good deal to do with the association that developed between his older colleagues, just as his involvement in Cook's first voyage had much to do with the subsequent British colonisation of Australia and New Zealand.
All three were Fellows of the Royal Society, Banks becoming its longest-serving president and the two older men being awarded the prestigious Copley medal.
The links between them, hitherto virtually unnoticed, and the uncanny parallels in the careers of Hunter and Cook, are here recorded in a fascinating study of a stimulating century.
