Jonathan Stokes

Jonathan Stokes (*  1755 in Chesterfield , †  April 18, 1831 in Kidderminster ) was a British botanist and doctor of medicine from the University of Edinburgh . Stokes had additional interests in the study of air chemistry and the classification of animal and plant fossils .

Live and act

Stokes was successful in establishing the scientific classification of plants in the then new Linnaeus system . For some plants, such as the lacquer tree and the beak-sedge , Stokes was the first to describe it ; his botanical author abbreviation is " Stokes ".

Together with William Withering , Stokes worked on researching the medical possibilities of the red foxglove ( Digitalis purpurea ), on whose medical effectiveness Stokes had already written a report at the medical faculty of the University of Edinburgh in 1776, while still a student. The second edition of Withering's discoveries about the effects of the plant on the heart , Treatise on the foxglove , was edited and supplemented by Stokes; Stokes also helped with the creation of the first edition of Witherings Botanical arrangements . During the preparation of the second edition of this book, however, the two men argued about the share of work that each of the two researchers had in it, which was to be reflected in both scientific and financial success. As a result of this dispute, the two parted ways in 1790.

In 1788, Stokes was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Stokes had become a permanent member of the Lunar Society in Birmingham in 1783 while working with Withering . Apparently the group met occasionally at his house; In Erasmus Darwin's notebook there is at least one specific entry about it for June 12, 1786. In 1790, however, Stokes broke away from the group in the course of his dispute with withing. He moved from Birmingham first to Shrewsbury , later to Kidderminster, where he died in 1831.

Honors

Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle named the daisy genus Stokesia after him .

literature

• Robert E. Schofield: The Lunar Society of Birmingham: a social history of provincial science and industry in eighteenth-century England . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1963.
• Jenny Uglow : The Lunar Men . 2nd Edition. Faber And Faber Ltd, London 2003, ISBN 0-571-21610-2 .

Web links

Author entry and list of the described plant names for Jonathan Stokes at the IPNI

Individual evidence

1. ↑ J. Britten, GS Boulger: A biographical index of British and Irish botanists. 1893.
2. ↑ Biography Witherings on the website of the Royal College of Physicans of Edinburgh (PDF; 445 kB)
3. ↑ Uglow, p. 409
4. ^ Joan Lane: Stokes, Jonathan (1755? –1831). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007 ( Memento of the original from February 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 23, 2009 
5. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .