John Ray

John Ray (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Ray was the son of a village blacksmith who got to Cambridge University on a scholarship. This was in 1644, when the Puritans were making war against Charles I. When he got his bachelor's degree in 1648, he continued as a Fellow of Trinity College.
Ray was a Protestant dissenter who had accepted the return of Charles II. He was ordained as a priest of the Church of England, in London in 1660. By then, Charles II insisted that all priests sign an affadavit against the Puritan party. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 made the Book of Common Prayer compulsory in religious services, which was opposed by those of Puritan beliefs. Ray would not sign the affidavit, so he was forced to resign his Fellowship, and could not work as a priest.
Ray returned to his native village of Black Notley, near Braintree in Essex. After Ray joined up with a former student, Francis Willughby, the pair spent three years in continental Europe, discovering what the latest scientific ideas were. When he returned to England in Spring 1666, he joined the new Royal Society, and devoted himself to the study of natural history. His most important scientific works were supported financially by the Royal Society, whose President at a critical time in the 1680s was Samuel Pepys.
Ray published important works on plants, animals, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his "Historia Plantarum", was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system by which species were classified according to an either/or type system. Instead he classified plants by observation according to similarities and differences. Thus he advanced scientific empiricism against the deductive rationalism of the scholastics. He was the first person to give a biological definition of the term "species".
Ray's works.
Ray published about 23 works, depending on how one counts them. The biological works were usually in Latin, the rest in English. For ease of reading, the titles below are in English.
Libraries holding Ray's works.
Including the various editions, there are 172 works of Ray, of which most are rare. The only libraries with substantial holdings are all in England.p153 The list in order of holdings is: