Johann Gaspar Scheuchzer, F. R. S. 1702-1729

Extract

Under the heading of Foreign Secretaries, the Record of the Royal Society shows in the second place on the list the names of Dr Dillenius and Dr Scheuchzer, elected on 18 April 1728, as joint successors to Philip Henry Zollman. Johann Jakob Dill, or Dillenius, is well known to students of the history of science, as a celebrated botanist, born at Darmstadt in 1648, educated at Giessen, elected into the Fellowship of the Royal Society on 25 June 1724, and appointed Sherardian Professor of Botany in the University of Oxford in 1734. He died in 1747. Of his colleague Johann Gaspar Scheuchzer, however, little is known. Born at Zurich in 1702, the son of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, F.R.S., Johann Gaspar came to England when he was twenty years old, under circumstances on which a little light is now thrown, thanks to the publication of some letters written to his father by John Woodward and Sir Hans Sloane.1 By the kind permission of the editor of Atlanis, Dr Martin Hiirlimann, they are reprinted below.