John Martyn (botanist)

John Martyn or Joannis Martyn (September 12, 1699 - January 29, 1768) was an English botanist.

Martyn's is best known for his "Historia Plantarum Rariorum" (1728-1737), and his translation, with valuable agricultural and botanical notes, of the Eclogues (1749) and Georgics (1741) of Virgil. On resigning the botanical chair at Cambridge he presented the university with a number of his botanical specimens and books.

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 abandoned this idea in favour of medical and botanical studies. 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; he also started the "Grub Street Journal", a weekly satirical review, which lasted from 1730 to 1737.

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, till 1768, when he resigned in favour of his son Thomas (1735-1825), author of "Flora rustica" (1792-1794). Although he had not taken a medical degree, he long practised as a physician at Chelsea, where he died.

The standard botanical author abbreviation J.Martyn is applied to species he described.

References

*1911

External links

* [http://library.cincymuseum.org/bot/martyn.htm John Martyn info from the Hauck Botanical online exhibit]
* [http://www.donaldheald.com/prints/prints_overview_01.php Donald Heald prints]