John Ray
1627-1705
British Botanist and Zoologist
Afounding figure in British botany and zoology, John Ray made extensive classifications of flowering and nonflowering plants and laid the groundwork for the field of taxonomy and other evolutionary studies. The seventeenth-century naturalist is often referred to as the father of natural history in Britain.
Ray was born on November 29, 1627, in the village of Black Notley, Essex, England. His father was a village blacksmith. Many speculate that Ray gained his love of plants from his mother, who was an herbalist. After studying at Cambridge and Trinity universities, Ray traveled throughout England and once to Europe to collect plants, animals, and rocks. He began to document his samples and established specimens in his college garden. The naturalist conducted experimental work in embryology and plant physiology and proved that the wood of a living tree conducts water. Ray's fascination with living and extinct organisms would eventually help make sense of the chaotic mass of names used by the other naturalists of his time.
During this time, Ray also studied for the priesthood. He lectured regularly about natural theology—the doctrine that God's wisdom and power could be understood by studying the natural world He created. Ray was ordained a minister in the Anglican Church in 1660 after years of delay caused by the English Civil War. Ray's formal recognition as a priest, however, was short-lived. During the war a manifesto for church reform had been drafted. England's new king was displeased with the Covenant and in 1662 demanded every minister to swear an oath condemning the reformation. Ray disobeyed the king's order. His defiance cost him his university post, his house, and his treasured botanic garden.
After the Reformation, Ray joined naturalist Francis Willughby (1635-1672) on an expedition to Wales. The pair agreed to undertake thehuge task of documenting the complete natural history of all living things, with Ray responsible for the plant kingdom and Willughby the animal. A three-year tour of the European continent greatly extended Ray's knowledge of flora and fauna. After Willughby's sudden death in 1672, Ray completed his portion of their project.
John Ray.(Corbis Corporation. Reproduced with permission.)Ray's research slowly began to bring order to the study of species. His method of classification would become a powerful tool in evolutionary studies. In 1660 Ray published his Catalogue of Cambridge Plants, his first systematic work on plants, birds, mammals, fish, and insects. Ray's goal of a natural system of classification inspired generations of systematists, including Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) and, eventually, Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
Because he was a natural theologian, Ray spent his time investigating the relationship of an organism's form to function. Both Ray and Linnaeus searched for a natural system of classifying organisms that would reflect God's order of creation. But unlike Linnaeus, who used the floral reproductive organs as the basis for classification, Ray classified plants by their overall form and structure, including internal anatomy. He was the first to divide flowering plants into monocots and dicots. His insistence on the importance of lungs and cardiac structure laid the groundwork for the establishment of the mammalian class. Although a truly natural system of taxonomy would not be realized until the age of Darwin, Ray's system came closer than any of his contemporaries.
Ray's insight that fossils were the remains of living organisms was a significant advance over most other theories of his time. His ideas about the relationship of fossils and Earth's age would eventually be studied by generations of paleontologists.
Years of renowned research paved the way for Ray's induction into the newly formed Royal Society of London, one of the world's first scientific societies, in 1667. As poor health began to restrict his travels, Ray spent the last years of his life interacting with the leading scientists of his time, including zoologist Martin Lister and English scientist Robert Hooke (1635-1703).
After his death on January 17, 1705, at the age of 77, Ray's legacy endured. His book Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium was posthumously published in 1713, and natural theology remained an influential doctrine for well over a century.
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