John Earle Raven

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John Earle Raven (born December 13, 1914 in Cambridge , † March 5, 1980 in Shepreth near Cambridge) was a British classical philologist and historian of philosophy. He dealt with Plato and the pre-Socratics . He was also an amateur botanist and had the botanical abbreviation Raven .

life and work

Raven was the son of the naturalist, canon, Cambridge professor and Masters of Christ Church College Charles E. Raven (1885-1964) and Margaret Wollaston, who came from a well-known family of scientists. He attended St Ronan's School in Worthing , in September 1928 he was awarded a scholarship at Marlborough College , then he studied on a scholarship at Trinity College of Cambridge University classics .

In the Second World War, citing Plato , he refused military service and generally participation in military work. Instead, he had a substitute social service in the philanthropic Oxford House of Guy Clutton-Brock in Bethnal Green , London.

After graduating with top marks, he became a research scholar in Cambridge in 1946 and became a fellow at King's College in 1948 . Raven was an amateur botanist and, in the late 1940s, uncovered a scam by Professor John William Heslop-Harrison in Newcastle upon Tyne who claimed to have found new, previously unobserved plant species in the Hebrides (especially the island of Rum ) - such as Raven claimed he brought her in himself. Raven's report was kept secret at his request and deposited in the Trinity College Library. Raven circulated the report clandestinely among selected colleagues and the finds were removed from the editions of British Flora without comment. He also let his doubts about the finds through in a Nature article from 1949.

Since 1954, Raven had been married to Constance Faith Alethea Hugh Smith, an avid gardener. In the same year the couple bought Docwra's estate in Shepreth , Cambridgeshire , with 1 acres of land. The house dates from the 17th century, but has older predecessors. Here they created a garden. They bought the neighboring farmhouse with 0.4 hectares of land to create a tennis court and a lawn for cricket . The couple took trips to France, Greece and Italy to collect plants for their garden. Both were particularly interested in alpine plants. Following her mother's death, Faith Raven inherited Ardtornish on Morvern in the west of the Scottish Highlands , which has an extensive rhododendron garden. It served the couple as a holiday home.

In 1976 Raven held the Gray Lectures in Cambridge on botany in ancient Greece, which were published as a book in 2000. He published two more books on botany and gardening. In 1984 he retired.

Docrwa's garden has been run by his widow since his death and can be visited for a fee. The couple had five children, Anna, Andrew Owen (1959-2005), Hugh, Sarah (1963) and Jane. Andrew Raven OBE inherited Ardtornish, which he expanded into a local center, and worked in nature and landscape conservation in Scotland. Sarah Raven runs a flower shop, a gardening school, is a columnist, writes gardening and cookbooks and moderates BBC programs .

Fonts

Philologica

  • Pythagoreans and Eleatics. An account of the interaction between the two opposed schools during the fifth and early fourth centuries BC Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1948
  • with Geoffrey S. Kirk : Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1957.
  • Plato's Thought in the Making. A Study of the Development of his Metaphysics . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1965.
  • Pythagoreans and Eleatics . Ares 1981.

Botanica

  • with Max Walters : Mountain Flowers . London, Collins 1956.
  • A Botanist's Garden . London, Collins 1971 (reprinted by Silent, Cambridge 1992).
  • Plants and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece . Oxford, Leopard's Head Press 2000.

literature

  • Karl Sabbagh: A Rum Affair: How Botany's "Piltdown Man" was Unmasked . The Penguin Press, Harmondsworth, Middlesex 1999, Chapter One, online . - Book review by Edward Teague, in: naturalSCIENCE 1999, online ; Richard Eder, Up the Garden Path. A 50-year-old hoax by a British botanist who planted his own downfall in the Hebrides , in: The New York Times on the web, August 13, 2000, online

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ RW David, Foreword 1992 in: John Raven, A botanist's garden. Cambridge, Silent 1992, 9
  2. ↑ Papers Relating to John Earle Raven in King's College Archive Center, Cambridge (estate 1948–2004)
  3. ↑ homepage Docraw's Manor
  4. ↑ John Raven, A botanist's garden. Cambridge, Silent 1992, 104 (first edition 1971)
  5. ^ RW David, Foreword 1992. In: John Raven, A botanist's garden. Cambridge, Silent 1992, 9-11 (first edition 1971)
  6. ↑ homepage Docraw's Manor
  7. ↑ Obituary
  8. ^ Obituary in the Guardian
  9. ^ Website Sarah Raven
  10. ^ Publications by Sarah Raven in the British Library catalog
personal data
SURNAME Raven, John Earle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British classical philologist and historian of philosophy
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1980
Place of death Shepreth