Alexandra Cook has a PhD in political philosophy from Cornell University and has taught in universities in the USA, New Zealand and Hong Kong. She has been a member of the Philosophy Department, University of Hong Kong since 2001. She published various books on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s scientific interests, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and botany: the salutary science (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 2012). Her current research projects concern the herbarium as a scientific object and the circulation of materia medica from Asia to Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.