John Martyn (botanist)

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Portrait of John Martyn

John Martyn or Joannes Martyn (12 September 1699 – 29 January 1768) was an

botanist.[1]

Life

Martyn was born in

Royal Society of London
.

Martyn was one of the founders (with

Rainbow coffee-house
, Watling Street.

In 1732 he was appointed Professor of Botany at Cambridge University, but, finding little encouragement and hampered by a lack of equipment, he soon ceased lecturing. He retained his professorship, however, until 1768, when he resigned in favour of his son Thomas. On resigning the botanical chair at Cambridge he presented the university with a number of his botanical specimens and books.[3]

John Martyn married Eulalia King, daughter of John King (1652–1732), rector of Pertenhall in Bedfordshire and Chelsea in London. Their son, Thomas Martyn (1735–1825) was also an eminent botanist, author of Flora rustica (1792–1794). After the death of his first wife, John Martyn married Mary Anne Fonnereau, daughter of Claude Fonnereau, merchant of London and Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, and the brother of Thomas Fonnereau.

Although he had not taken a medical degree, he long practised as a physician at Chelsea, which is where he died in 1768.

His son Thomas wrote a memoir of his father in 1770.[4] An expanded version of this memoir was prepared and published by George Gorham in 1830.[5]

Work

He is best known for his Historia Plantarum Rariorum (1728–1737, illustrated by Jacob van Huysum), and his translation, with valuable agricultural and botanical notes, of the Eclogues (1749) and Georgics (1741) of Virgil. Editions continued to be issued after his death.

With

Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, he abridged and translated the Philosophical History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, which was published in 1742.[6] He also started the Grub Street Journal
, a weekly satirical review, which lasted from 1730 to 1737.

Publications

For a full list, see Gorham p. 78[7]

  • Cotyledon africana Burm.f. ex Steud. from Historia plantarum rariorum
    Cotyledon africana Burm.f. ex Steud.
    from Historia plantarum rariorum

References

  1. ^  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Martyn, John". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 317–9.
  2. ^ Agnew, David Carnegie (1886). Protestant exiles from France, chiefly in the reign of Louis XIV; or, The Huguenot refugees and their descendants in Great Britain and Ireland. Edinburgh: Turnbull & Spears.
  3. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Martyn, John" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  4. ^ Thomas Martyn, Some account of the late John Martyn, F.R.S., and his writings. London: 1770.
  5. ^ Gorham 1830.
  6. ^ Académie royale des sciences. The Philosophical History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. Trans. John Martyn and Ephraim Chambers. 5 vols. London: John and Paul Knapton; Francis Cogan; and John Nourse, 1742.
  7. ^ Gorham 1830, p. 78.
  8. ^ International Plant Names Index.  J.Martyn.

Bibliography

External links