John Ray (1627 - 1705)

John Ray

John Ray was a British clergyman, naturalist, botanist and zoologist, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

He came from a poor family, but through his persistence in acquiring knowledge he achieved recognition as a scientist. Ray published important works on botany, zoology, and natural history. His classification of plants in Historia Plantarum was an important step toward modern taxonomy (the scientific study of naming, defining, and classifying groups of biological organisms based on common characteristics). John Ray was the first to provide a biological definition of the term "species."