Description

Nehemiah Grew was an active member of the Royal Society during the lively period of its early years in the 1670s and 1680s, serving both as Curator for the Anatomy of Plants and as Secretary to the society. As a result of his decade producing innovative studies on plants using a microscope, he published The Anatomy of Plants in 1682, a lavishly illustrated book that was widely circulated and very influential in the decades following its publication. Yet, despite the key role Grew and his work played in determining the direction of research in these formative years of the Royal Society and its networks, Grew today remains an understudied figure in the history of science. This special issue, which features emerging scholarship from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, not only highlights Grew’s individual role in shaping research in the late seventeenth century, but by extension centers the field of plant studies and the biological sciences, considering their impact on the philosophical and economic principles being developed at that time.