Nehemiah Grew

Nehemiah Grew (1641 to 1712) was an English plant anatomist and physiologist, known as the Father of Plant Anatomy. The only son of a Nonconformist divine in Coventry, he graduated at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1661 and took his MD at Leiden University ten years later. He began observing the anatomy of plants in 1664, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1671 after his essay The Anatomy of Vegetables begun was communicated to it. He settled in London as a physician in 1672 and in 1677 succeeded Henry Oldenburg as secretary of the society. His great work, the Anatomy of Plants of 1682, described nearly all the key differences in the morphology of stem and root, showed that the flowers of the Asteraceae are built of multiple units, and correctly hypothesized that stamens are male organs. It also contains the first known microscopic description of pollen, work that is central to the field of palynology.