Francis Willughby FRS was an English ornithologist and ichthyologist. He was born and raised at Middleton Hall, Warwickshire, the only son of an affluent country family. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was tutored by the mathematician and naturalist John Ray, who became a lifetime friend and colleague. He died of pleurisy in July 1672, aged 36.
About Francis Willughby in brief
Francis Willughby FRS was an English ornithologist and ichthyologist. He was born and raised at Middleton Hall, Warwickshire, the only son of an affluent country family. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was tutored by the mathematician and naturalist John Ray, who became a lifetime friend and colleague. He and Ray were advocates of a new way of studying science, relying on observation and classification, rather than the received authority of Aristotle and the Bible. He died of pleurisy in July 1672, aged 36. His premature death meant that it fell to Ray to complete the works on animals they had jointly planned. In due course, Ray published books on birds, fish and invertebrates, the Ornithologiae Libri Tres, Historia Piscium and Historia Insectorum. The books included innovative and effective ways of classifying animals. All three were influential in the history of life science, including their effect on subsequent natural history writers and their importance in the development of Linnaeus’s binomial nomenclature. He appears to have read widely, his library at his death containing an estimated 2,000 books, including literary, historical and heraldic works as well as natural science volumes. He married Emma Barnard in 1668 and the couple had three children. He also joined Gray’s Inn in 1657, not an unusual step for a man of property who might have to deal with legal disputes. The family were affluent gentry, whose main seat was Wollaton Hall, now in Nottingham.
The younger Francis studied at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School, Sutton Coldfield and Trinity College. In 1663 he was elected a founder Fellow of the Royal Society on the nominations of Ray and John Wilkins, who was Master of Trinity College in 1660, and eventually Bishop of Chester. He then briefly visited the University of Oxford to consult some rare natural history books of Oxford. In May 1662, he briefly visited a local lake and was shown a chickarwater chick, which he then briefly showed to Philip Skippon, Ray and Philip Skipper. He later helped in collecting plants for his Catalogus Plantus Plantabum circa Cantrigiam Nascentium, which was published in February 1660. In April 1663, he visited Nantwich and Anglesey and called Llanis Llanberis, a lake in the Isle of Man and called Calf of Man, and called a local fish lake, Llanlan Lberis. In June 1662 he visited the last site of Oxford University and consulted some rare history books, and was briefly shown a rare bird, a shear water chick. In July 1663 Willugh by, then aged 27, was elected as a Fellow ofthe Royal Society in 1661, then age 27. He then went on a tour of continental Europe, visiting museums, libraries and private collections and studying local animals and plants. After their continental tour, he and Ray lived and worked mainly at MiddleTON Hall.
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