He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame.

[4] As a boy, Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside and developed a keen interest in nature, history, and botany.

Determined to receive botanical instruction, he paid the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764.

As Banks's influence increased, he became an adviser to King George III and urged the monarch to support voyages of discovery to new lands, hoping to indulge his own interest in botany.

[9] In 1766, Banks was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year, at 23, he went with Phipps aboard the frigate HMS Niger to Newfoundland and Labrador with a view to studying their natural history.

On 7 May, he noted a large number of "penguins" swimming around the ship on the Grand Banks, and a specimen he collected in Chateau Bay, Labrador, was later identified as the great auk.

[12] Banks was appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the South Pacific Ocean on HMS Endeavour, 1768–1771.

Banks funded eight others to join him: the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, the Finnish naturalist Herman Spöring (who also served as Banks's personal secretary and as a draughtsman), artists Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan, and four servants from his estate: James Roberts, Peter Briscoe, Thomas Richmond, and George Dorlton.

[citation needed] The voyage went to Brazil, where Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, Bougainvillea (named after Cook's French counterpart, Louis Antoine de Bougainville), and to other parts of South America.

[11] While they were in Australia, Banks, Daniel Solander, and Finnish botanist Dr Herman Spöring Jr. made the first major collection of Australian flora, describing many species new to science.

Banks immediately arranged an alternative expedition, and in July 1772, Daniel Solander and he visited the Isle of Wight, the Hebrides, Iceland, and the Orkney Islands,[11] aboard Sir Lawrence.

Its 34 acres ran along the northern side of the London Road, Isleworth, and contained a natural spring, which was an important attraction to him.

He steadily created a renowned botanical masterpiece on the estate, achieved primarily with many of the great variety of foreign plants he had collected on his extensive travels around the world, particularly to Australia and the South Seas.

During much of this time, he was an informal adviser to King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a position that was formalised in 1797.

[27] Although Banks remained uninvolved in these colonies in a hands on manner, he was, nonetheless, the general adviser to the government on all Australian matters for twenty years.

[28] Every vessel that came from New South Wales brought to Banks plants or animals or geological and other specimens and, on at least one occasion, human remains.

"[29] He was continually called on for help in developing the agriculture and trade of the colony, and his influence was used in connection with the sending out of early free settlers, one of whom, a young gardener George Suttor, later wrote a memoir of Banks.

The three earliest governors of the colony, Arthur Phillip, John Hunter, and Philip Gidley King, were in continual correspondence with him.

Banks produced a significant body of papers, including one of the earliest Aboriginal Australian words lists compiled by a European.

This brought him in direct confrontation with post-Rum Rebellion de facto leaders such as John Macarthur and George Johnston.

The next governor, Lachlan Macquarie, was asked to arrest Macarthur and Johnston, only to realise that they had left Sydney for London to defend themselves.

He worked with Sir George Staunton in producing the official account of the British mission to the Chinese Imperial court.

Although the Macartney Embassy returned to London without obtaining any concession from China, the mission could have been termed a success because it brought back detailed observations.

In 1819, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, on his First Russian Antarctic Expedition, briefly stopped in England and met Joseph Banks.

[11] Banks was a major supporter of the internationalist nature of science, being actively involved both in keeping open the lines of communication with continental scientists during the Napoleonic Wars, and in introducing the British people to the wonders of the wider world.

His portrait, painted in 1814 by Thomas Phillips, was commissioned by the Corporation of Boston, as a tribute to one whose 'judicious and active exertions improved and enriched this borough and neighbourhood'.

[citation needed] At the 2011 Chelsea Flower Show, an exhibition garden celebrated the historic link between Banks and the botanical discoveries of flora and fauna on his journey through South America, Tahiti, New Zealand, and eventually Australia on Captain Cook's ship Endeavour.

This was replaced in 1938 with a rectangular stone plaque commemorating Banks and botanists David Don and Robert Brown and meetings of the Linnean Society.

He appears briefly as a contact with British naval intelligence in the historical novel Post Captain, from the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian.

In 1828 the latter passed bound volumes of foreign correspondence to the British Library but retained the rest of the papers in the expectation that an official biography would be written.