On July 31, 1897, Beatrix Potter presented her scientific paper "On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae" to the Linnaean Society of London — or rather, it was presented on her behalf by a man, because women were not permitted to attend meetings of the Linnaean Society, let alone present.

Potter — yes, that Beatrix Potter, who later created Peter Rabbit — had become fascinated with fungi as a young woman and had spent years producing meticulous watercolor illustrations of mushrooms, spores, and lichens. In the 1890s, she developed an independent scientific hypothesis about lichen: that they were not single organisms but symbiotic partnerships between fungi and algae.

This was not a fringe theory — it had been proposed by Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener in 1869 — but it was contested, and Potter had done original work developing it through careful observation and attempted cultivation of lichen spores. She brought her findings to William Thiselton-Dyer, director of Kew Gardens. He dismissed her. She was advised to submit her paper to the Linnaean Society; it was read aloud without her presence.

The mycological community subsequently moved on. Her paper was largely ignored. She turned her attention to children's book illustration.

The Linnaean Society formally apologized to Potter in 1997, one hundred years after the paper was read.