Martin Lister 1639-1712

Martin LISTER 1639-1712

Biographical Note

Born at Radclive, Buckinghamshire, son of Sir Martin Lister, MP for Brackley. BA St John's College, Cambridge 1659, fellow 1660-69, MA 1662. Travelled in France in the early 1660s, sometimes with John Ray, and studied medicine at Montpellier. Moved to Craven, Yorkshire in 1670, and established a medical practice in York. Fellow of the Royal Society 1671. Moved to London in 1683, where he became active in the meetings of the Royal Society, and after being granted an MD by Oxford in 1684 he was eligible to join the Royal College of Physicians and practice in London, where his patients included those of high social rank. He was appointed a physician to Queen Anne in 1702. He published numerous medical and natural history books from the 1670s onwards, and in 1699 an account of A journey to Paris in the year 1698. An extensive set of drawings of all known shells, largely made by his children, was engraved and published in the 1690s, and became "the bible of conchologists for over a hundred years (ODNB).

Books

The first statement in Lister's will is the direction to give all his books and copperplates to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, from whence they were transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1860. ca.1260 books were received, largely 17th century with a high proportion on medicine, botany, and travel.

Sources

• Macray, W. D. Annals of the Bodleian Library. 2nd edn, Oxford, 1890, p.366.
• Woodley, J. D. "Lister, Martin (bap. 1639, d. 1712), physician and naturalist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Martin Lister at Canterbury Cathedral Library.