Isaac Lawson, Physician and Naturalist Linnaeus’S Scottish Patron
E. Charles Nelson Isaac Lawson, Physician and Naturalist Linnaeus’s Scottish Patron n 19 December 1735 NS (8 December OS), Johan Frederik Gronovius Oand Isaac Lawson sent from Leiden a copy of Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae (1735) to Sir Hans Sloane explaining, in their jointly signed letter, that it has been “sent to the press at our own expense, with an intention to have a few copies; but at the request of several friends we have determined to communicate it fully (judging it might be agreeable to the Learned world. [)]”1 Ten days later, on 18 December 1735 OS, the English naturalist Mark Catesby (1683–1749) presented another copy that he also had received from Gronovius to the Royal Society in London.2 Whereas biographical accounts of Gronovius have been published, Lawson, who is frequently but inaccurately labelled as a botanist, and wrongly named as Andrew (Andry) or John (Johann), is not so well documented although he is accorded an entry (of about 170 words) in the Oxford dictionary of national biography.3 He is also often confused with John Lawson (c. 1674–1711), an English naturalist who explored Carolina in the early 1700s.4 Nor, indeed, has anyone ever questioned how a fellow student from Scotland, only a few years older than Linnaeus, could undertake to fi nance the publication of the Swedish naturalist’s fi rst publication. Lawson family No record of Isaac Lawson’s birth or baptism can be traced in Scottish pa- rochial archives so his year of birth can only be approximated. When his name was inscribed in the “Album Studiosorum”
[Show full text]