biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1810–88)
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| biography:
| Botanist, born in Sauquoit, New York, USA. He received his MD in 1831, but gave up medicine after a year's practice to pursue his interest in botany. He taught high-school science in Utica, NY (1832–5), making botanical expeditions to S New York and New Jersey during his summers. He moved to New York City to join his friend and fellow botanist John Torrey (1836), published his first textbook Elements of Botany (1836), and collaborated with Torrey to publish the first two (and only) volumes of their projected multi-volume Flora of North America (1838–43). He accepted the post of professor of botany at the new University of Michigan but, when this did not materialize due to the institution's financial difficulties, he relocated to Harvard (1842–73). There he created Harvard's department of botany and brought it to international prominence, while educating many students who became the next generation's leaders in plant science. As author of over 350 books, monographs, and papers, he both popularized and professionalized the study of botany in America. By replacing the classical rigid Linnaean system with a more natural classification of plants by type specimen, he became the leading taxonomic botanist in the USA. Charles Darwin so admired Gray's work that he shared his theory of natural selection in a letter to Gray (1857) before the theory was published, and although Gray had some reservations about the theory, he became an ardent Darwinist, championing natural selection and refuting ideas that Darwinism could not coexist with Protestant Christianity. After retirement, he continued to take charge of his specimen collection in Harvard's Gray Herbarium. Among his many writings is the classical treatise, Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States (1848), still known as ‘Gray's Manual’. |
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