Edward Lhuyd
Edward Lhuyd (sometimes rewritten as
Llwyd in recent times) (
1660–
June 30,
1709) was a
Welsh naturalist,
botanist,
linguist,
geographer and
antiquary.
Llwyd was born in
Loppington,
Shropshire. He attended
grammar school in
Oswestry and went up to
Jesus College, Oxford in 1682 but dropped out before his
graduation. In 1684, he was appointed assistant to
Robert Plot, the
Keeper of the
Ashmolean Museum and replaced him as Keeper in 1690; he held this post until 1709.
Whilst employed by the Ashmolean he travelled extensively. A visit to
Snowdonia in 1688 allowed him to construct for
John Ray's Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicorum a list of flora local to that region. After 1697, Llwyd visited every county in Wales, and then travelled to
Scotland,
Ireland,
Cornwall, and
Brittany. In 1699, with financial aid from
Isaac Newton, he published
Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, a catalogue of
fossils collected from places around
England, mostly Oxford, and held in the Ashmolean. In 1707, he released the first volume of
Archaeologia Britannica: an Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of Great Britain, from Travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland and Scotland.
Llwyd died of
pleurisy in Oxford.
In 1701, Llwyd was made
MA honoris causa by the University of Oxford, and he was elected Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1708. The Snowdon lily
Lloydia serotina bears his name, as does
Cymdeithas Edward Llwyd, the National Naturalists' Society of Wales.
*
Biography of Edward Lhuyd from the Canolfan Edward Llwyd, a centre for the study of science through Welsh.
