John Martyn (botanist)

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John Martyn

John Martyn (born September 12, 1699 in London , † January 29, 1768 in Chelsea ) was an English botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " J.Martyn ".

Life

John Martyn is the son of the Hamburg trader Thomas Martyn and his wife Katharine Weedon. Born on September 12, 1699 on Queen Street , London , he attended a private school in the neighborhood and worked in his father's accounting office when he was 16.

In the summer of 1718, the pharmacist Wilmer, who later became a demonstrator at the Chelsea Physic Garden, aroused his interest in botany, which was further promoted by Patrick Blair and William Sherard . Martyn Joseph Pitton de Tournefort translated Histoire des plantes from French into English as early as 1720 .

Around 1721 he made the acquaintance of Johann Jacob Dillen . Together with him, Philip Miller , Thomas Dale and others, he founded a botanical society which initially met every Saturday morning at the Rainbow Coffee House on Watling Street and which lasted five years. Martyn was the secretary of that society and lectured on technical terms in the natural sciences.

In 1725 and 1726 he gave public botanical lectures in London. During this time he also put together a table with medicinal plants, which he arranged according to the system of John Ray and which appeared under the title Tabulae synopticae .

On March 30, 1727 he was elected a member of the Royal Society after a proposal by John Diodate (1690-1727) . In the same year he gave the first botanical lectures ever held at Cambridge University . For his students he created an abridged version of Ray's originally alphabetically arranged catalog of Cambridge plants and again applied his plant systematics. From 1727 to 1730 he lived in Great St Helen's ( Bishopsgate , London).

In 1728 the first decade of the Historia Plantarum Rariorum tables was published. The work contained images of some newly introduced plants grown in the Chelsea Physic Garden. Many of the plants native to North America and the West Indies were collected by William Houstoun and sent to England. They were drawn by Jacob van Huysum (1680–1740), the older brother of the Dutch painter Jan van Huysum , and engraved by Edward Kirkall (1692–1750). The panels were printed with a colored mezzotint technique and then colored with watercolors . The work is one of the first botanical works to use color printing . After another four decades, published up to 1738, the work had a volume of 52 plates.

On May 26, 1730, Martyn was admitted to Emmanuel College Cambridge to study medicine, but gave up again after five semesters. Together with Alexander Russel he edited the satirical Grub Street Journal from 1730 to 1737 and wrote his own articles for it.

On August 20, 1732, John Martyn married Eulalia King, the youngest daughter of John King, who was rector of Chelsea and benefactor of York. With her he had three sons and five daughters. One of his sons is the botanist Thomas Martyn (1735-1825).

After the death of Richard Bradley he was elected on February 8, 1733 as his successor and thus professor of botany at Cambridge University. He held this post until 1762, but only lectured for two or three years.

Relieved of his obligations, he turned to the editing and translation of Virgil's works . In 1741 his annotated English translation of Virgil's Georgica appeared , with Edmond Halley assisting him with the astronomical part. In 1749 the translation of the Bucolica followed .

In 1749 his wife Eulalia died. In July 1750 he married Mary-Anne Fonnereau, the daughter of a London merchant, who gave birth to another son. In 1752 the family moved to a farm in Hill House ( Streatham Common , Surrey ).

He retired from his post as professor of botany at Cambridge on January 30, 1761, for the sake of his son Thomas, who succeeded him in this office. John Martyn died in Chelsea on January 29, 1768.

Honor taxon

William Houstoun named the genus Martynia of the chamois horn family (Martyniaceae) in his honor . Carl von Linné later took over this name.

Works (selection)

  • Tournefort's' History of Plants Growing about Paris, With their Uses in Physick; and A Mechanical Account of the Operation of Medecines. Translated into English, with many additions. And accommodated to the plants growing in Great-Britain . London, 1720
  • Tabulae synopticae plantarum officinalium ad methodum Raianam dispositae . 1726
  • Methodus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium . 1727
  • Historia Plantarum Rariorum . London: Richard Reily, 1728-1738
  • Pub. Virgilii Maronis Georgicorum libri quatuor. The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English translation and notes . 1741
  • Pub. Virgilii Maronis Bucolicorum Eclogae decem. The Bucolicks of Virgil with an English translation and notes . 1749
  • Dissertations and critical remarks upon the Aeneids of Virgil ... . London, 1770 (posthumous)

swell

  • Alexander Chalmers: The General Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the most Eminent Persons in Every Nation; Particularly the British and Irish; from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time . London, 1812-1817. - 32 volumes
  • Wilfrid Blunt : The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History. Dover Publications . 1994. ISBN 0-486-27265-6

literature

  • DE Allen: John Martyn's Botanical Society: some further identifications . In: Society for the History of Natural History newsletter . No. 24 (Feb. 1985)
  • Ian MacPhail, William J. Hess: The date of the Linnaean index in John Martyn's Historia plantarum rariorum . In: Huntia . Volume 3. pp. 73-81.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica Leiden 1737, p. 93
  2. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . Leiden 1742, p. 292
personal data
SURNAME Martyn, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1699
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1768
Place of death Chelsea , London