Biography

Scottish physician, botanist and palaeontologist, a protegé of William Withering (1741-1799) for whom he assisted with Withering's A Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain (1776), one of the earliest English language books to use the new Linnaean system. A fellow member of the 'Lunar Society', founded in 1766 by Matthew Boulton and Erasmus Darwin, that included many eminent scientists and industrialists. This famous Birmingham-based philosophical society met monthly around the time of the full moon, so that attendees leaving the meeting should have fewer problems with thieves, and was often referred to as 'The Lunatics'.

Though friends for many years, a dispute later ensued because Stokes claimed that the second edition of Withering's book, produced some eleven years later, had been prepared entirely by himself and, wanting fair credit, began referring to it as 'his book'. Professional jealousy led to a bitter argument which developed until Stokes was obliged to leave the area and the society; even after Withering's death his son continued to harass Stokes. As a physician in Kidderminster, Stokes later became one of the founder members of the Linnean Society in 1788 and wrote A botanical materia medica (1812).

Stokes' herbarium was apparently acquired by Robert Brown but subsequently auctioned by Sotheby (London) on 23 November 1856. The present location of the original material is not known, but some undated British specimens at BM, bearing the name 'Stokes' as a collector, may be a remnant of the herbarium. In most sources his name is cited as Dr Jonathan Stokes, without the middle initial. The genus Stokesia L'Her. In the Asteraceae was named in his honour.