John Ray: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

John Ray (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was an English Christian naturalist and one of the earliest English parson-naturalists. Until 1670 he wrote his name as John Wray; from then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him". He published important works in the fields of botany, zoology and natural theology.

His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division, by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceived series of characteristics they have or have not, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species, as "a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor". Another significant contribution to taxonomy was his division of plants into those with two seedling leaves (dicotyledons) or only one (monocotyledons), a division used in taxonomy today.