Jeanne Baret

Jeanne Baret was born in a village in Burgundy to a family of day labourers and grew up learning to recognise medicinal plants, the knowledge of an herb-woman. In her early twenties she became housekeeper to the naturalist Philibert Commerson, a widower with a small son, and then his companion and collecting assistant.

When Commerson was appointed botanist on Louis-Antoine de Bougainville's expedition to circle the globe in 1766, women were forbidden on French naval ships. Baret bound her chest with linen bandages, dressed as a man, and came aboard the Étoile as his valet, Jean. Commerson was often ill, and it was Baret who did much of the physical work: hauling the presses and boxes, climbing through the forests of Brazil, the Strait of Magellan and Tahiti to gather specimens. The bougainvillea plant may well have been collected by her.

Her identity was uncovered during the Pacific crossing; accounts of how vary, and some suggest she suffered assault at the hands of sailors. In 1768 she and Commerson left the expedition in Mauritius. He died there in 1773, leaving her without support. She ran a tavern, married a French soldier, and returned to France around 1775, thereby completing her circuit of the globe.

The French navy later granted her a small pension, noting her courage. Over six thousand of the specimens she helped collect went into the Paris herbarium, many with other people's names on them. A plant genus, Baretia, was named for her by Commerson and later renamed; in 2012 a new species of nightshade, Solanum baretiae, was named in her honour.