Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dryander, Jonas

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
1171718Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 16 — Dryander, Jonas1888George Simonds Boulger

DRYANDER, JONAS (1748–1810), botanist, was born in Sweden in 1748. He was sent by his uncle, Dr. Lars Montin, to whom his education was entrusted, first to the university of Gottenburg and afterwards to that of Lund, where he graduated in 1776, his thesis being published as ‘Dissertatio Gradualis Fungos regno vegetabili vindicans,’ Lund, 4to, 1776. Attracted by the fame of Linnæus, he then proceeded to Upsala, and having subsequently acted as tutor to a nobleman he came to England, and in 1782, on the death of his friend Solander, succeeded him as librarian to Sir Joseph Banks at Dean Street, Soho. Dryander afterwards became librarian to the Royal Society, and was one of the original fellows, the first librarian, and a vice-president of the Linnean Society, founded by his friend, Sir J. E. Smith, in 1788. When the society was incorporated in 1802, Dryander was the chief author of its laws. He was the main author of the first edition of Aiton's ‘Hortus Kewensis,’ published in 1789, and of part of the second edition, issued between 1810 and 1813, and he edited Roxburgh's ‘Plants of the Coromandel Coast,’ between 1795 and 1798; but his ‘magnum opus’ was the ‘Catalogus Bibliothecæ Historico-Naturalis Josephi Banks, Baronetti,’ London, 1796–1800, 5 vols., of which Sir James Smith writes that ‘a work so ingenious in design and so perfect in execution can scarcely be produced in any science.’ Dryander died at the Linnean Society's house in Soho Square 19 Oct. 1810. A portrait of him by George Dance, 1796, was lithographed by W. Daniell in 1812, and his services to botany were commemorated by his friend Thunberg in the genus Dryandra, a group of South African Proteaceæ.

[Mem. and Corresp. of Sir J. E. Smith, i. 165; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 43; Encyclopædia Britannica.]

G. S. B.