John Martyn or Joannes Martyn (12 September 1699 – 29 January 1768) was an English botanist. [1]
John Martyn or Joannes Martyn (12 September 1699 – 29 January 1768) was an English botanist. [1]
Martyn was born in London, the son of a merchant. He attended a school in the vicinity of his home, and when he turned 16, worked for his father, intending to follow a business career. He married Marie Anne Fonnereau, daughter of Claude Fonnereau, a Huguenot refugee who had settled in England and become a successful merchant. [2] Martyn abandoned his business pursuits in favour of medical and botanical studies. [3] His interest in botany came from his acquaintance with an apothecary, John Wilmer, and Dr. Patrick Blair, a surgeon-apothecary from Dundee who practiced in London. Martyn gave some botanical lectures in London in 1721 and 1726, and in 1727 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Martyn was one of the founders (with Johann Jacob Dillenius and others) and the secretary of a botanical society which met for a few years in the Rainbow coffee-house, Watling Street. [3]
In 1732 he was appointed Professor of Botany at Cambridge University, but, finding little encouragement and hampered by a lack of equipment, he soon ceased lecturing. He retained his professorship, however, until 1768, when he resigned in favour of his son Thomas. On resigning the botanical chair at Cambridge he presented the university with a number of his botanical specimens and books. [3]
John Martyn married Eulalia King, daughter of John King (1652–1732), rector of Pertenhall in Bedfordshire and Chelsea in London. Their son, Thomas Martyn (1735–1825) was also an eminent botanist, author of Flora rustica (1792–1794). After the death of his first wife, John Martyn married Mary Anne Fonnereau, daughter of Claude Fonnereau, merchant of London and Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, and the brother of Thomas Fonnereau.
Although he had not taken a medical degree, he long practised as a physician at Chelsea, which is where he died in 1768. [3]
His son Thomas wrote a memoir of his father in 1770. [4] An expanded version of this memoir was prepared and published by George Gorham in 1830. [5]
He is best known for his Historia Plantarum Rariorum (1728–1737, illustrated by Jacob van Huysum), and his translation, with valuable agricultural and botanical notes, of the Eclogues (1749) and Georgics (1741) of Virgil. [3] Editions continued to be issued after his death.
With Ephraim Chambers, author of the famous Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , he abridged and translated the Philosophical History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, which was published in 1742. [6] He also started the Grub Street Journal , a weekly satirical review, which lasted from 1730 to 1737. [3]
For a full list, see Gorham p. 78 [7]
Sir James Edward Smith was an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society.
Johann Jacob Dillen Dillenius was a German botanist. He is known for his Hortus Elthamensis on the rare plants around Eltham, London, and for his Historia muscorum, a natural history of lower plants including mosses, liverworts, hornworts, lycopods, algae, lichens and fungi.
Charles de l'Écluse,L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius, seigneur de Watènes, was an Artois doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists.
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Jan Commelin, also known as Jan Commelijn, Johannes Commelin or Johannes Commelinus, was a botanist, and was the son of historian Isaac Commelin; his brother Casparus was a bookseller and newspaper publisher. Jan became a professor of botany when many plants were imported from the Cape and Ceylon and a new system had to be developed. As alderman of the city, together with burgomaster Johan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen he led the arrangement of the new botanic garden Hortus Medicus, later becoming Hortus Botanicus. He cultivated exotic plants on his farm 'Zuyderhout' near Haarlem. Commelin amassed a fortune by selling herbs and drugs to apothecaries and hospitals in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities.
Thomas Martyn was an English botanist and Professor of Botany at Cambridge University. He is sometimes confused with the conchologist and entomologist of the same name. The standard author abbreviation Martyn is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Zachary Philip Fonnereau was a British businessman and politician.
Thomas Fonnereau was a British merchant and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1741 and 1779.
Martyn Fonnereau was the second son of Zachary Philip Fonnereau, a British merchant and banker of Huguenot extraction.
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Ephraim Reinhold Seehl was an apothecary and chemist of German background, born in Sweden. He was known as a manufacturer of green vitriol.
John King was an English churchman, patron of the Church of Pertenhall in Bedfordshire.
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Jacob van Huysum was an 18th-century botanical painter from the northern Netherlands who moved to England in 1721.
James Sherard was an English apothecary, botanist, and amateur musician.
Samuel Genersich was a Carpathian German physician and botanist.
Isaac Rand (1674–1743) was an English botanist and apothecary, who was a lecturer and director at the Chelsea Physic Garden.
Edward Rudge was an English botanist and antiquary.
Claude Fonnereau was a French Huguenot refugee who settled in England and became a prominent merchant. He was the founding father of the Fonnereau family in England.
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Martyn, John". Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 317–9.
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