JOHN

See also:

• MARTYN, HENRY (r781-1812)
• JOHN MARTYN (1699-1768)

MARTYN (1699-1768)  , English botanist, was born in London on the 12th of September 1699 . Originally intended for a business career, he abandoned it in favour of medical and botanical studies . He was one of the founders (with J . J . Dillen 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 in Cambridge University, but, finding little encouragement and hampered by lack of appliances, he soon discontinued lecturing . He retained his professorship, however, till 1762, 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 on the 29th of January 1768 . His reputation chiefly rests upon 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 . See memoir by Thomas Martyn in Memoirs of John Martyn and Thomas Martyn, by G . C .

Gorham (183o) .