Nehemiah Grew

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Nehemiah Grew.

Nehemiah Grew (born September 26, 1641 in Mancetter Parish , Warwickshire , England , † March 25, 1712 in London ) was an English doctor , botanist and plant anatomist .

Live and act

Grew studied philosophy at Cambridge University , then medicine at Leiden University , where he received his PhD in 1671. med. PhD. After completing his studies, he worked as a doctor in Coventry , and from 1672 in London. From 1677 to 1679 he was secretary of the Royal Society in London.

Grew dealt very successfully with the anatomy of plants, which made him known as a microscopist, and is one of the founders of plant anatomy . His research activities included the search for structural similarities between plants and animals. He realized that plants are made up of cells . He differentiated parenchymatic tissue from the longitudinally stretched fiber forms, described the real vessels and the sap-carrying canals and demonstrated (at the same time, but much more carefully than Marcello Malpighi ) the merging of these tissue forms in the various organs of the plants. He also had clearer ideas about the construction of the spiral vessels .

With his microscope he also examined the reproductive organs of plants and described the pollen grains produced by them .

Grew also discovered that people differ in their fingerprints . To this end, he published the first work worldwide on this subject in 1684, explaining characteristic features such as skin grooves , furrows, valleys and pore structures of the fingerprints.

Honor taxon

In honor of Carl von Linné , Grew named the genus of star bushes ( Grewia ), which is now part of the Mallow family (Malvaceae).

Works

  • 1682: Anatomy of plants (first textbook on plant anatomy, which also appeared in French translation: Anatomie des plantes (1675)).

swell

  • Meyers Konversationslexikon 1888–1889
  • Ilse Jahn (Hrsg.) Et al .: History of Biology . Spectrum 2000
  • Karl Mägdefrau : history of botany . Fischer 1992

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Grew, Nehemiah. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 510.
  2. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica Leiden 1737, p. 93
  3. ↑ Carl von Linné: Hortus Cliffortianus . Leiden, 1737, p. 433; based on an illustration from the Hortus Malabaricus Volume V, p. 91, plate 46 [1]
  4. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . Leiden 1742, p. 439

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Grew, Nehemiah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English botanist, physician and physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1641
PLACE OF BIRTH Mancetter Parish , Warwickshire , England
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1712
Place of death London