Full name Edward Whitaker Gray Name Edward Gray | Main interests Natural history | |
 | ||
School or tradition Royal College of Physicians Major works Keeper: National Collection Died December 27, 1806, British Museum, London, United Kingdom | ||
Edward Whitaker Gray (21 March 1748 – 27 December 1806), English botanist and secretary to the Royal Society, was uncle of Samuel Frederick Gray, author of The Practical Chemist.
Contents
- Educational and professional roles
- Family
- Articles published in Philosophical Transactions
- Catalogues
- References
Educational and professional roles
While attending the College of Physicians he performed the duties of librarian. He became a licentiate in 1773. He graduated M.D., and ultimately was assigned as keeper of the departments of Natural history and antiquities in the British Museum, which consisted of the collection purchased from Sir Hans Sloane on his passing in 1753. This role he held from 1778 until his death. During his tenure, he reorganized the natural history collections employing the Linnæan system. George Shaw assumed his duties as keeper in 1807 having assisted since 1791.
Within zoology, his Catalogue of Shells for the British Museum (1791) best reflect his work as a malacologist.
He introduced two plants, Hexandria monogynia, native to Brazil, and Hexandria monogynia, native to Portugal, shipped from Oporto, and catalogued (1777) in the Royal Botanical gardens at Kew. He was one of the original associates of the Linnean Society in 1788.
In 1785 and 1786 he delivered Croonian Lectures on topics related to muscle response, and in 1789 he contributed Observations on the … Amphibia to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, of which he was a fellow (elected Feb. 1779), and of which on St. Andrew's day in 1797 he became the junior secretary. His 1807 successor to this secretarial post was Sir Humphry Davy, future mentor to Michael Faraday.
He died at the British Museum, 27 Dec. 1806, in his fifty-ninth year of age.
Family
He married Elizabeth Bearsley on 6 June 1775 in Oporto, Portugal. By her he had three children. His two daughters, Juliana and Elizabeth, were both christened in Portugal. The younger daughter married in 1808 Taylor Combe, who subsequently assumed the junior secretarial role for the Royal Society. His son, Francis Edward Gray died on 3 January 1814 at Oporto, 29 years of age.