Nehemiah Grew

Nehemiah Grew ( born September 26, 1641 Mancetter Parish, Warwickshire, England; † March 25, 1712 in London ) was an English botanist, physician and physiologist.

Life and work

Grew initially studied philosophy at Cambridge University, then medicine at Leiden University, where he received his doctorate in 1671 for Dr. med. He worked after his studies as a doctor in Coventry, from 1672 in London. From 1677 to 1679 he served as secretary of the Royal Society in London.

Grew dealt very successfully with the anatomy of the plants that made ​​him known as a microscopist and one of the founders of plant anatomy. He realized that plants are composed of cells. He distinguished parenchymatous tissue of the longitudinally stretched fiber forms, described the real vessels and the juice leading channels and pointed ( at the same time, but much more carefully than Marcello Malpighi ) the amalgamation of these tissue forms in the various organs of the plant according to. Also the construction of the spiral vessels he had clearer ideas.

With his microscope, he examined the reproductive organs of plants and described the pollen grains produced by them.

Grew discovered in the rest of that people differ in their fingerprints. To this end, he published in 1684 the first working worldwide on this issue, which he said characteristic features such as skin grooves, ridges, valleys and pore structures of the fingerprints.

Ehrentaxon

Carl Linnaeus named Grew is in honor belongs to the genus of the star bushes ( Grewia ), now in the plant family (Malvaceae ).

Works

Swell

• Meyers encyclopedia 1888-1889
• Ilse Jahn (ed.) et al. History of biology. spectrum in 2000
• Karl Mägdefrau: History of botany. Fischer 1992