35 Facts About John Ray

John Ray FRS was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.

John Ray published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology.

John Ray's classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy.

John Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceived series of characteristics they have or have not, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation.

John Ray was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species, as "a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor".

John Ray was born in the village of Black Notley in Essex.

John Ray is said to have been born in the smithy, his father having been the village blacksmith.

John Ray was chosen minor fellow of Trinity in 1649, and later major fellow.

John Ray was highly regarded as a tutor and he communicated his own passion for natural history to several pupils.

In 1673, John Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton in Oxfordshire; in 1676 he went to Middleton Hall near Tamworth, and in 1677 to Falborne Hall in Essex.

John Ray kept writing books and corresponded widely on scientific matters, collaborating with his doctor and contemporary Samuel Dale.

John Ray lived, in spite of his infirmities, to the age of seventy-seven, dying at Black Notley.

John Ray is buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul where there is a memorial to him.

John Ray is widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.

At Cambridge, John Ray spent much of his time in the study of natural history, a subject which would occupy him for most of his life, from 1660 to the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Willughby arranged that after his death, John Ray would have 6 shillings a year for educating Willughby's two sons.

John Ray had previously in three different journeys travelled through the greater part of Great Britain, and selections from his private notes of these journeys were edited by George Scott in 1760, under the title of Mr Ray's Itineraries.

John Ray himself published an account of his foreign travel in 1673, entitled Observations topographical, moral, and physiological, made on a Journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France.

In 1667 John Ray was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 he and Willughby published a paper on Experiments concerning the Motion of Sap in Trees.

John Ray was left with an ornithology and ichthyology to edit as well as his own work dealing with mammals, reptiles and insects.

Lady Cassandra had supported John Ray's continued work, but the widow Willughby had no interest in her late husband's scientific interests or his scientific friends.

John Ray was no longer allowed to instruct the children, and John Ray and his wife Margaret Oakley were forced to leave the Willughby household in Middleton.

Critically, John Ray lost access to the Willughby collections, notes and manuscripts at this time.

John Ray had likely already used the botanical collections to lay much of the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova, His great Historia generalis plantarum appeared in 3 vols.

John Ray gave an early description of dendrochronology, explaining how to find the ash tree's age from its tree-rings.

John Ray's model was an account by Bauhin of the plants growing around Basel in 1622 and was the first English county flora, covering about 630 species.

John Ray's system, starting with his Cambridge catalogue, began with the division between the imperfect or lower plants, and perfect higher plants.

John Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of species, in his 1686 History of Plants:.

John Ray published about 23 works, depending on how they are counted.

John Ray's works were directly influential on the development of taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus.

The Ray Society, named after John Ray, was founded in 1844.

The John Ray Society is the Natural Sciences Society at St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

In 1986, to mark the 300th anniversary of the publication of John Ray's Historia Plantarum, there was a celebration of John Ray's legacy in Braintree, Essex.

The John Ray Initiative is an educational charity that seeks to reconcile scientific and Christian understandings of the environment.

John Ray's writings proclaimed God as creator whose wisdom is "manifest in the works of creation", and as redeemer of all things.