A generation or so ago, scholarly discussion about the creation of new scientific knowledge in seventeenth-century England was often framed in terms of the respective contributions of scholars and practitioners, the effects of their training and background, the relative importance of the universities compared with London, and of the role of external and internal factors, and so forth. These discourses have now largely been put aside in favour of those emphasizing spatial metaphors and models, which are recognized as powerful conceptual tools for representing the dynamics of complex systems. The role that geographies play in the fostering of creativity and innovation in human systems at both the social and cognitive levels is a subject that is attracting widespread interest.

In his classic textbook, The History of Biology, Erik Nordenskiöld suggested that there had existed, throughout the nineteenth century, not one but two distinct forms of plant geography. He designated one of these traditions of inquiry ‘floristic’ plant geography, tracing its origins back to the work of Carl Linnaeus on species and their distributions. The second form Nordenskiöld termed ‘morphological’, by which he meant that its practitioners concentrated upon the study of vegetation rather than flora. He located the origins of this tradition of inquiry within the botanical work of Alexander von Humboldt.

In a 1976 paper, Robert DeKosky wrote ‘William Crookes is a puzzle to historians of latenineteenth century science. Despite his achievements we are forced to ask why he did not accomplish more.’ It is an interesting question; equally interesting is the question that prompts this paper – how did he accomplish so much?

Why some scientists become prolific and successful is a question with both historical and ahistorical dimensions. Among the former are a number of cultural aspects rarely studied by historians. They include the nature of childhood experience, family attitudes, mentoring, and the existence of intellectual and practical support networks in adulthood. Ail are important, but how they contribute to individual success varies with time and place.

Anyone reading the literature on the history of graphs will soon realize that the use of graphie displays of any type was really quite unusual until the mid-ninetenth century and that those scientists who did make use of them are often familiar to us as creative thinkers in their own fields of endeavour. A ternary diagram (also known as a triangular diagram) is a particular type of graph which consists of an equilateral triangle in which a given plotted point represents the relative proportions (a, b, c) of three end-members (A, B and C), generally expressed as percentages and constrained by a + b + c = 100%. It has long been used to portray sample composition in terms of three constituents, or an observed colour in terms of three primary colours, because it is a convenient means of representing a three-component System in a planar projection, rather than as an isometric, or similar, view of a three-dimensional space. Recent papers suggest that its use is not as familiar to some statisticians as are other commonly used forms of graph. For example, although it was cited by Peddle in 1910 and more recently by Dickinson, it is not discussed in modern texts on statistical graphies nor in the key papers on the history of graphs. However, beginning with studies of colour-mixing in the eighteenth century, it has subsequently become widely used, particularly in geology, physical chemistry and metallurgy. In this paper, I attempt to document its gradual uptake as a standard method of data display and some of the scientific advances which its use has facilitated.