John Edward Gray (1800–75) was a British zoologist and botanist. The keeper of zoology at the British Museum-London 1840–74, he compiled comprehensive discussions of animal groups and new species descriptions.
Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, Gray was the son of pharmacologist and botanist Samuel Frederick Gray and brother of zoologist George Robert Gray. He studied medicine in London but was much more interested in botany and was co-author with his father of The Natural Arrangement of British Plants (1821.)
Gray joined the British Museum-London as assistant keeper of zoology in 1824, graduating to become a keeper in 1840. In 1874, the British Museum’s natural history holdings were split off to the Natural History Museum. He enormously increased the British Museum’s collections, making them amongst the best in the world.
Gray published 1,162 books, memoirs, and notes, including several catalogs of the museum collections that included comprehensive discussions of animal groups and descriptions of new species. Gray also wrote a Handbook of British Waterweeds (1864.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Edward Gray
We have no problems, only situations. Not all problems have solutions, but all situations have outcomes.
—John Edward Gray
Topics: Problems
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