John RayBorn 29 Nov 1627; died 17 Jan 1705 at age 77. English naturalist and botanist who was a leader in his field during the 17th-century English and contributed significantly to progress in taxonomy, and is often referred to as the father of natural history in Britain. He toured Europe with Francis Willoughby in search of specimens of flora and fauna. Ray was the first to classify flowering plants into monocotyledons and dicotyledons. Ray established the species as the basic taxonomic unit - his enduring legacy to botany. His major work was the three-volume Historia Plantarum (1686-1704). He also attempted to classify the animal kingdom. In 1693 he published a system based on a number of structural characters, including internal anatomy, which provided a more natural classification than those being produced by his contemporaries. |
