[12] Using the Dutch and French linguistic resources of his family, he edited The Discovery of Tasmania (1992)[13] which brought together all known journal extracts from the first two European expeditions to Van Diemen's Land.

[15] Nature's Argonaut (1998),[16] Edward Duyker's biography of Daniel Solander the naturalist on HM Bark Endeavour and the first Swede to circle the globe, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's History Awards in 1999.

[18] It has become an important Western Australian and Tasmanian historical source and, with its annotations and introduction, informed public debate regarding the heritage-listing of Recherche Bay in Tasmania.

[21] With former Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown, archaeologist John Mulvaney and broadcaster Peter Cundall, Duyker was an outspoken campaigner for the protection of Recherche Bay from logging.

[22] François Péron: An Impetuous Life (2006),[23] Duyker's biography of the zoologist of the expedition of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin to Australian waters (1800—1803), won the Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize in 2007.

Duyker's biographies of naturalists are largely conventional linear narratives, but they are characterised by meticulous research and great attention to detail – "written with verve, but fortified with awesome scholarship" as Dymphna Clark put it in her review of Nature's Argonaut.

Prof. Barrie Macdonald of Massey University described it as "a fine piece of detective work – a biography written with an empathy with its subject yet a critical eye that helps set in context a death that still has its significance in New Zealand history.

Reviewing An Officer of the Blue, Michael Roe (historian) wrote: "In building his story, Duyker has to confront matters of war, politics, geography, navigation, anthropology – the list could continue.

[41] Duyker's biography of French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville was shortlisted and a runner-up for the 2015 Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize.