John Ray
was born in Essex in 1627, the son of a blacksmith. He
went to Cambridge University in 1644, encouraged by
the Vicar of Brain tree. He was elected a Fellow of
Trinity College in 1649, Tutor in 1653. He was
ordained as a Puritan minister in 1660. In 1660 he
published a catalogue of plants growing around
Cambridge University. Ray was an English naturalist
and has been called the "father of English Natural
History" and the "greatest European botanist of the
seventeenth century."
He traveled extensively through England, Scotland
and Wales and in 1663-66 about Europe in an attempt to
produce a systematic description of the entire organic
world. The age of herbalists was over as indicated by
John Ray. Also, with Morison, he made the greatest
advance in plant classification in the 17th Century.
This system was the basis of classification of De
Jussieu and de Candolle. He exemplified the highest
ideals of science, character and scholarship.
In 1682 he published Methodus Plantarum
Nova, which with its later editions, gave his
final views on his system of classification. He
published Historia Plantarum Generalis (1686,
1704) in three volumes. This book was his greatest
botanical contribution and contained not only a
description of all known plants but also a general
introduction to botanical science including plant
anatomy plant physiology and plant morphology. This
book (3 volumes) became the standard botanical text of
the time and was still a reference book 100 years
later. He published Synopsis Stirpium
Brittannicarum in 1870. It was the first British
Flora.
