The Beginning

John Ray was born on 29th November 1627 in Black Notley, near Braintree in Essex. His father was a blacksmith and his mother was skilled in curing common illnesses with the use of herbal medicines. It is said that it was from her that he got his initial interest in botany. He won a scholarship to Cambridge and entered Catharine Hall (now our very own Catz) at the age of 16. He transferred to Trinity in 1646, where he graduated and was made a fellow in 1649. Here he held a number of positions, lecturing in Greek (1651), mathematics (1653) and humanities (1655). He was made Praelector and Junior Dean in 1657 and was college steward in 1659 and 1660. During his time in Cambridge, Ray gave sermons in the college chapel and at Great St Mary’s, among the more famous include two which were published, The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation (1692) and Miscellaneous Discourses concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (1692).

Illness

Ray suffered from serious illness in 1650 and had to take long walks around Cambridge in order to aid his recovery. As he did this he become very interested in the plant-life that he saw and was frustrated with the lack of information on the subject. This prompted him to write his first book Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigian nascentium which was published in 1660. This small pocket book gave descriptions of 626 plants and gave their locations in such detail that it is possible to find some of the rare ones to this day. Ray was, first and foremost, a botanist and this was where he excelled and made the most impact, although he published many works in many areas. The terms ‘petal’ and ‘pollen’ were first used by Ray and he was the first to distinguish between monocotyledons and dicotyledons. Also during his time in Cambridge he became renowned as a tutor, probably his most famous student is Francis Willughby, who shared his passion for natural history and had a significant impact on his life.

Ray made three journeys (1658, 1661, 1662) to cover almost all of Great Britain in order to make observations like those he used to write Catalogus plantaram circa Cantatbrigian nascentium. Ray’s private notes from these journeys were edited by George Scott in 1760 and entitled Mr Ray’s Itineraries while Ray himself used his notes to publish Catalogus plantarum Anglicae in 1670.

Troubles

In 1662 Ray was forced to abandon his fellowship due to the fact that he would not abide by the Act of Uniformity (an Act passed by parliament dictating the form of public prayer, administration of sacraments and other rites of the Church of England, to which all University members musst subscribe). Ray was now without means to live on and became dependent on Willughby.

He lost his access to Cambridge libraries, and lamented his distance from the Botanic gardens being established in London, but he built up a library in Essex, travelled widely to see plants in their native habitats, and received many samples in the post from Britain, Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. His field studies made him the most travelled scientist of his century, at a time when travel was hard. The first map of Britain to show roads only appeared in 1675, too late for Ray and his companions, whose expeditions began in 1650.

In 1663 Ray, Willughby and two other students began a tour of Europe and from his observations Ray published Observations topographical, moral and physiological, made on a journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy and France. From this tour, both Ray and Willughby had made many collections and planned to complete systematic descriptions of the flora and fauna they had seen. Willughby started this but died in 1972 leaving Ray to edit an ornithology and ichthology. Ray used his botanical observations from the tour to write Methodus planiarum nova (1682) and the book which is often said to be his greatest work, Historia gnerallis plantarum (3 vols, 1686, 1688, 1704) which covered some 18600 species.

In 1667 Ray was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (oldest scientific society in Great Britain) and in 1669 he and Willughby published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions on Experiments concerning the motion of Sap in Trees.

Final Years

In 1673, Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton and in 1679 he returned to Black Notley, having spent some time in Sutton Coldfield and Falborne. Here he lived out the end of his days by writing books and keeping correspondence with the scientific community. Despite his bodily weakness and chronic sores, Ray lived to the ripe old age of 76. He died on the 17th of January 1705.

Legacy

In 1844 the Ray Society was founded in his honour for the publication of works on natural history.

Sir James Smith (1759-1828), founder of the Linnean Society lauded Ray as: "...our immortal naturalist, the most accurate in observation, the most philosophical in contemplation, and the most faithful in description of all the botanists of his own or perhaps any other time." Indeed, it is the opinion of many that he was more original than Linnaeus, being the definitive field naturalist as well as being a classifier and cataloguer.