The historical power of the natural science collection of Dominik Bilimek at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU)

The scientific world of the nineteenth century was shaped by far-reaching discoveries,expeditions, travel and collection activities as well as by the development of extensive naturalscientific social networking. During the 1840s, Dominik Bilimek (1813–1884) arose as a keypersonality in European natural sciences, with a significant impact on the biological,geoscientific and even archaeological communities. The Bilimek collection at the Universityof Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna encompasses thousands of specimens andprovides a large number of original labels with date, locality and companions in the field.This set of collection labels was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively with respect to itshistorical value to increase our knowledge about the explorer’s life and his social network.The study also focuses on Bilimek’s so far unknown social links, which were recovered bythe processing of the collection, probably resulting in the use of these data for a socialnetwork analysis of a nineteenth-century scientific network.