Martin Lister
Martin Lister | |
---|---|
Born | Radcliffe, Buckinghamshire | 12 April 1639
Died | 2 February 1712 Epsom, Surrey | (aged 72)
Resting place | Clapham Church |
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | St John's, Cambridge |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physician and naturalist |
Martin Lister FRS (12 April 1639 – 2 February 1712) was an English naturalist and physician. His daughters Anne and Susanna were two of his illustrators and engravers.[1]
Life
Lister was educated at
Lister bought Carlton Hall in Craven in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He attended the Earl of Portland when he was ambassador to France in 1698.
He was physician to Queen Anne from 1709 until his death.[4] He died at Epsom at the age of 72 and was buried at Clapham Church.[3] He bequeathed his books and copper-plates to the University of Oxford.[5]
Lister was a prolific correspondent. More than 2,000 letters written by and to him survive in the Bodleian Library, Oxford and other repositories. They are to and from a variety of people including family, friends and other scientists. Abstracts of these letters have been published on line.[6]
Memorial inscription
The memorial inscription for Lister in Clapham church is now lost. It read:
Near this place is buried the body of
MARTIN LISTER,
Doctor of Physick, a Member of the
Royal Society, and one of
Queen Ann's Physicians,
who departed this life,
the second day of
February 1711–12.[7]
Scientific work
Lister contributed numerous articles on natural history, medicine and antiquities to the
In 1683 he communicated to the Royal Society (1684[9]), an ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of countries; together with tables of sands and clays, such as are chiefly found in the north parts of England. In this essay he suggested the preparation of a soil or mineral map of the country, and thereby is justly credited with being the first to realise the importance of a geological survey.
Charles Lyell speaks of Lister in his Principles of Geology as follows:
Dr. Plot, in his 'Natural History of Oxfordshire.' (1677) attributed to a 'plastic virtue latent in the earth' the origin of fossil shells and fishes; and Lister, to his accurate account of British shells, in 1678, added the fossil species, under the appellation of turbinated and bivalve stones. 'Either,' said he, 'these were terriginous, or if otherwise, the animals they so exactly represent have become extinct. This writer appears to have been the first who was aware of the continuity over large districts of the principal groups of strata in the British series, and who proposed the construction of regular geological maps.[10]
He was a benefactor of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.[4] The ridge Dorsa Lister in the Sea of Serenity on the Moon was named after him.
Collections
Before he died in 1712, Lister donated over a thousand books and manuscripts to the Ashmolean Museum,[11] most of which were medical and scientific works. In 1769 John Fothergill gifted the Ashmolean several volumes of Lister's letters and around 40 of his notebooks, which he had bought at auction.[12]
In 1858 the Trustees of the Museum offered a transfer of their written artefacts to the Bodleian, and in 1860 more than 3700 volumes were received by the Library.[11] Lister's books and manuscripts form almost a third of this initial collection, making him its second-most represented donor next to Elias Ashmole.[11] His series consists of c. 1260 volumes dating from the 16th to 18th centuries, their topics ranging through medicine, anatomy, natural philosophy, and botany, as well as into voyages and travel.[13]
Publications
- Histories Animalium Angliae tres tractatus, &ct,, 1678.
- Goedartii Historia Insectorum cum notis, 1682.
- De Fontibus medicinalibus Angliae,,, 1682.
- Historiae Conchyliorum, 1685
- Exercitatio Anatomica, in qua de Cochlcis agitur, 1694.
- Exercitatio anatomica, in qua de cochleis, maxime terrestribus et limacibus, agitur (in Latin). London: Samuel Smith & Benjamin Walford. 1694.
- Cochlearum ct Linacum exercitatio Anatomica,,, 1695.
- Conchyliorum bivalvium utriusque aquae exercitatio anatomica tertia (in Latin). London. 1696.
- Exercitationes Medicinales, &tc,,. 1697.
- Journey to Paris, c. 1699
See also
References
- ^ a b J. D. Woodley, 'Lister , Susanna (bap. 1670, d. 1738)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 10 April 2017
- ISBN 9789004207035.
- ^ a b "Lister, Martin (LSTR655M)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c d Royal Society (Great Britain), Charles Hutton The Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, Volume 1
- ^ Keynes, Geoffrey (1979)."Dr. Martin Lister, F.R.S." The Book Collector 28 no.4 (Winter):501-520.
- ^ Early Modern Letters Online
- ^ Royal College of Physicians
- ^ Historiae Conchyliorum, Vol. 1 and 2 (1685) – digital facsimile, Linda Hall Library]
- ^ Lister M. An ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of countries, together with tables of sands and clays, such chiefly as are found in the north parts of England, drawn up about 10 years since, and delivered to the Royal Society Mar. 12. 1683. by the Learned Martin Lister M.D. In Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society [dead link]. 1684. Vol. 14. P. 739-746.
- ^ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1832, p.35
- ^ a b c Macray, William Dunn (1890). Annals of the Bodleian library, Oxford : with a notice of the earlier library of the University (Second ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 388–390. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
- ^ Roos, Anna Marie; Cultures of Knowledge. "The Correspondence of Martin Lister (1,212 letters)". Early Modern Letters Online. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
- ^ "Rare Books: Named collections index: Lister, Martin". The Bodleian Libraries. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
Sources
- Dr. Martin Lister: A bibliography by Geoffrey Keynes. (Includes illustrations by Lister's wife and daughter). Published by St Paul's Bibliographies (UK) with an ISBN 0-906795-04-4
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lister, Martin". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Lister, Martin (1678) Historiæ Animalium Angliæ - digital facsimile at the Linda Hall Library
- Lister, Martin (1685) Historae conchyliorum.../ Susanna et Anna Lister figuras pin, two vol. - digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library
- The Correspondence of Martin Lister in EMLO