| AdminHistory | Israel Lyons (1739 - 1775) was born in Cambridge in 1739. He was an astronomer, mathematician and botanist. Due to his Jewish background he was unable to become a member of Cambridge University but he still wrote a publication on fluxions ('Treatise on fluxions') at the age of 19, and a survey of Cambridge flora a few years later. He was also invited by undergraduate, (Sir) Joseph Banks, to deliver a series of botany lectures at the University of Oxford. He was also selected by the Astronomer Royal to compute astronomical tables for the Nautical Almanac. Later, Banks secured Lyons a position as the astronomer for the 1773 North Pole voyage led by Constantine Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave.
Lyons married Phoebe Pearson, daughter of Newman Pearson of Over, Cambridgeshire, in March 1774 and settled in Rathbone Place, London. He died of measles on 1 May 1775, at the age of 36. |
| William Hudson (1734-1793) was born in Kendal, Westmorland in 1734. He was Praefectus et praelector at Chelsea Physic Garden from 1765-1771. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1761 and a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1791. He produced 'Flora Anglica' in 1762 which Sir James Edward Smith regarded as marking 'the establishment of Linnean principles of botany in England, and their application to practical use'. He had a herbarium, some of which were sold with A.B. Lambert's herbarium. Part of his herbarium was burnt prior to his death and the rest is at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He died in London on 23 May 1793. |