John Woodward (naturalist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Woodward (May 1, 1665 - April 25, 1728) was an English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist.
Woodward was born in Derbyshire. At the age of sixteen he went to London, where he studied with Dr. Peter Barwick, physician to Charles II. In 1692 he was appointed professor of physics in Gresham College. In 1693 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1695 was made M.D. by Archbishop Tenison and also by Cambridge, and in 1702 became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 1699, John Woodward published his water culture (hydroponics) experiments with spearmint. He found that plants in less-pure water sources grew better than plants in distilled water.
While still a student he became interested in botany and natural history, and during visits to Gloucestershire his attention was attracted by the fossils that are abundant in many parts of that county; and he began to form the great collection with which his name is associated. His views were set forth in An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies, especially minerals, &c. (1695; and ed. 1702, 3rd ed. 1723). This was followed by Brief Instructions for making Observations in all Parts of the World (1696). He was author also of An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England (2 vols., 1728 and 1729). In these works he showed that the stony surface of the earth was divided into strata, and that the enclosed shells were originally generated at sea; but his views of the method of formation of the rocks were entirely erroneous. Indeed, they were satirized very effectively by Dr. Arbuthnot, who consistently ridiculed Woordward's heavily classicist method and what Arbuthnot saw as personal venality. In his elaborate Catalogue he described his rocks, minerals and fossils in a manner far in advance of the age. He died on the 25th of April 1728, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
By his will he directed that his personal estate and effects were to be sold, and that land of the yearly value of one hundred and fifty pounds was to be purchased and conveyed to the University of Cambridge. A lecturer was to be chosen, and paid £100 a year to read at least four lectures every year, on some one or other of the subjects treated of in his Natural History of the Earth. Hence arose the Woodwardian professorship of geology. To the same university he bequeathed his collection of English fossils, to be under the care of the lecturer, and these formed the nucleus of the Woodwardian museum at Cambridge. The specimens have since been removed to the new Sedgwick museum.
A full account of Woodward's life and views and a portrait of him are given in the Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick, by J. W. Clark and T. McK. Hughes, where it is mentioned that his paper, read before the Royal Society in 1699, entitled Some Thoughts and Experiments concerning Vegetation, shows that the author should be ranked as a founder of experimental plant-physiology, for he was one of the first to employ the method of water-culture, and to make refined experiments for the investigation of plant-life.
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
