Product Code Database
Edward Lhuyd ( ; ; 166030 June 1709), also known as Edward Lhwyd and by other spellings, was a Welsh scientist, geographer, historian and antiquary. He was the second Keeper of the University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, and published the first catalogue of , the Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia.
While working at the Ashmolean Museum, Lhuyd travelled extensively. A visit to Snowdonia in 1688 allowed him to compile for John Ray's Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum a list of flora local to that region. After 1697, Lhuyd visited every county in Wales, then travelled to Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man. In 1699, it became possible through funding from his friend Isaac Newton for him to publish the first catalogue ever of , his Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia. These had been collected in England, mostly in Oxford, and are now held in the Ashmolean.
Lhuyd received a MA honoris causa from the University of Oxford in 1701 and a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1708.
In 1696, Lluyd transcribed much of the Latin inscription on the 9th-century Pillar of Eliseg near Valle Crucis Abbey, Denbighshire. The inscription subsequently became almost illegible due to weathering, but Lhuyd's transcript seems to have been remarkably accurate. Robert M. Vermatt, "The text of the Pillar of Eliseg"
Lhuyd was also responsible for the first scientific description and naming of what we would now recognize as a dinosaur: the sauropod tooth Rutellum impicatum.
The first written record of a trilobite was by Lhuyd in a letter to Martin Lister in 1688 and published (1869) in his Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia.R. M. Owens, 1984. Trilobites in Wales. Geological Series No. 7. 22 pp. (Geological publications of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff). It is a fleeting mention and he simply identifies his find as a "skeleton of some flat fish". The trilobite is nowadays identified as Ogygiocarella debuchii Brongniart, 1822.A. Brongniart, 1822, Les Trilobites, pp. 1–65, plates 1–4: A. Brongniart and A. G. Desmarest, Histoire Naturelle des Crustacés Fossiles, Paris.
In 1707, having been assisted in his research by a fellow Welsh scholar, Moses Williams, Lhuyd published the first volume of Archæologia Britannica. This has an important linguistic description of Cornish, which is noted all the more for the understanding of historical linguistics it shows. Some of the ideas commonly attributed to linguists of the 19th century have their roots in this work by Lhuyd, who was "considerably more sophisticated in his methods and perceptions than [William Jones]]". (2025). 9780521880053, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521880053
Lhuyd noted a similarity between two language families: Brythonic or P–Celtic (Breton language, Cornish and Welsh language) and Goidelic or Q–Celtic (Irish language, Manx language and Scottish Gaelic). He argued that both families were derived from the Continental Celtic languages; the Brythonic languages originated in the Gaulish language once spoken and written by the Gauls of Pre-Roman France and the Goidelic languages are derived from the Celtiberian language once spoken in the Pre-Roman Iberian Peninsula, which includes modern Spain and Portugal. He concluded that as these languages were of origin, those who spoke them were Celts. From the 18th century, peoples of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales were known increasingly as Celts. They are seen to this day as modern Celtic nations.
The Cretaceous Bryozoa species Charixa lhuydi (originally described as Membranipora lhuydi) is named in his honour. The Snowdon lily ( Gagea serotina) was for a time called Lloydia serotina after Lhuyd.
Cymdeithas Edward Llwyd, the National Naturalists' Society of Wales, is named after him. On 9 June 2001 a bronze bust of him was unveiled by Dafydd Wigley, a former Plaid Cymru leader, outside the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth, next to the National Library of Wales. The sculptor was John Meirion Morris; the inscription on the plinth, carved by Ieuan Rees, reads "" ("linguist, antiquary, naturalist").
|
|
