John Latham
John Latham is a Médecin, Naturaliste and British writer , born the June 27th 1740 with Eltham in Kent and dead the February 4th 1837.
Latham was baptized the grandfather of the Australian Ornithologie . It is him studied the majority of the birds sent to the the United Kingdom and that it named them. Among those, we can quoted the Émeu, the white Cacatoès ( Cacatua alba ), the eagle of Australia ( Aquila audax ), the Cassican flutor ( Gymnorhina tibicen ) and the Ara Hyacinthe ( Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus ).
Wire of surgeon, Latham also practices medicine with Dartford in the Kent, where he discovers the Fauvette pitchou ( Sylvia undata ). It is withdrawn in 1796 and settles in the Hampshire.
has off General Synopsis Birds (1781-1801) is its first work of Ornithologie and contains 106 boards which it all carried out. It describes many new species which it discovers in various cabinets of curiosities. In this work, like Buffon (1707-1788), it does not attach importance to the names of the species which it quotes. Later, it carries out that only the use of the binomial system linnéen ensures a posterity the description of new species. It thus makes appear in 1790, a Index Ornithologicus where it specifies the binomial name of all the species which it had previously described. Unfortunately, that arrives too late, Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1748-1804) had made appear its own version of the Systema Naturæ of Carl von Linné (1707-1778) where it names the species of Latham; taking into account the rules of nomenclature, Gmelin is priority.
The third work of Latham on the birds is its General History off Birds (1821-1828) where it describes many birds of its personal collection. Unfortunately, this one was lost and the precise determination of the species is very difficult. Moreover, it employs only partly the binomial denomination.
It regularly maintains a correspondence with the naturalists Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), the collector James Darcy Rising (1729-1788) and well of others.
It is allowed with the Royal Society in 1775 like with others learned societies foreign. It also takes part in the creation of the Company linnéenne of London.
The Tallégalle de Latham ( Alectura lathami ) was dedicated to him by John Edward Gray (1800-1875) in 1831.
List partial of the publications
- has general synopsis off birds, with has suppl. White, Leigh & Sothebys, London 1781-1802.
- Index ornithologicus sive Systema ornithologiæ. London, Paris 1790-1809.
- Allgemeine Übersicht der Vögel. Weigel, Nürnberg 1793.
- Faunula Indica id is Catalogus animalium Indiae orientalis. Gebauer, Halle 1795.
- has general history off birds. Jacob & Johnson, Winchester 1821-28.