Richard Bradley (botanist)

Richard Bradley (* 1688 ? † November 5, 1732 in Cambridge ) was an English botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Bradley ".

Life

Richard Bradley grew up near London and developed an interest in everything horticultural. In 1710 he appeared for the first time with a six-page treatise on succulent plants ( A Treatise on Succulent Plants ).

Although he had no university education, he was proposed by Robert Balle for membership in the Royal Society of London in November 1712 and elected as a member on December 1, 1712. His sponsors included James Petiver and Hans Sloane .

In 1714 Bradley traveled to the Netherlands to visit a number of botanical gardens. Provided with letters of recommendation, he met various natural scientists (for example Antoni van Leeuwenhoek ) and arranged the exchange of plant material between London and Amsterdam .

From 1716 to 1727 he published the first botanical work in the world devoted exclusively to succulent plants in five parts with ten plates each. With one exception, the drawings came from himself.

With 15 issues he put together from 1721 to 1723 the first regularly appearing British gardening magazine ( A General Treatise on Husbandry and Gardening ).

He dealt with the weather in the works The Gentleman and Gardener's Kalendar (1718) and A Philosophical Inquirey into the Late Servere Winter (1729). The Country Housewife and Lady's Director (1728 and 1732) is about cooking and other practical things in life . In the first part of 1728, for example, there is a recipe for making ketchup .

In 1724 Richard Bradley became first professor of botany at the University of Cambridge on the recommendation of William Sherard .

Honors

• The cactus species Opuntia bradleyi was named after him by Gordon Douglas Rowley in 1958 .
• The yearbook of the British Cactus and Succulent Society , Bradleya , which has been published since 1983 , is named after him.

Fonts (selection)

• A Treatise on Succulent Plants. 1710.
• The History of Succulent Plants. 1716-1727.
• The Gentleman and Gardener's Calendar… 1718.
• New Improvements of Planting and Gardening both Philosophical and Practical. 1719-1720.
• A Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature… London 1721 (online) .
• The Plague at Marseilles consider'd…. 1721.
• A General Treatise on Husbandry and Gardening,… 1721–1724.
• A Survey of Ancient Husbandry and Gardening Collected from the Greeks and Romans. 1725.
• The Country Housewife and Lady's Director… 1728 and 1732.
• A Philosophical Inquirey into the Late Servere Winter,… 1729.
• The Riches of a Hop Garden Explained. 1729
• A Dictionary of Plants, Their Description and Use. 1747.

literature

• Richard Bradley (1688-1732) . In: John Venn , John Archibald Venn (eds.): Alumni Cantabrigienses . A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900. Part 1: From the earliest times to 1751 , volume 1 : Abbas-Cutts . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1922, pp. 201 ( venn.lib.cam.ac.uk Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Frank N. Egerton: Richard Bradley's understanding of biological productivity: A study of eighteenth-century ecological ideas. In: Journal of the History of Biology. Volume 2, No. 2 (September 1969)
• Benjamin Daydon Jackson :  Bradley, Richard . In: Leslie Stephen (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 6:  Bottomley - Browell. , MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1886, p. 172 (English).
• Frank N. Egerton: Bradley, Richard (1688? –1732). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of May 2005 (not viewed).

proof

• Wilfrid Blunt : The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History. Dover Publications, 1994, ISBN 0-486-27265-6
• Frank N. Egerton: Richard Bradley's Relationship with Sir Hans Sloane. (June 1970).
• Frank N. Egerton: A History of the Ecological Science, Part 20: Richard Bradley. Entrepreneurial Naturalist. (April 2006).
• Gordon Douglas Rowley : A History of Succulent Plants. Strawberry Press, 1997, ISBN 0-912647-16-0 .

Web links

Commons : Richard Bradley  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Entry for Bradley, Richard (- 1732) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
• Works by Richard Bradley (1688–1732) in Project Gutenberg ( currently not generally available for users from Germany )
• Author entry and list of the plant names described for Richard Bradley (botanist) at the IPNI