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James Petiver () was a London apothecary, a fellow of the Royal Society as well as London's informal Temple Coffee House Botany Club, famous for his specimen collections in which he traded and study of botany and entomology. He corresponded with John Ray and Maria Sibylla Merian. Some of his notes and specimens were used by Carl Linnaeus in descriptions of new species. The genus Petiveria was named in his honour by Charles Plumier. His collections were bought by Sir Hans Sloane and became a part of the Natural History Museum.
In 1692 he set up his apothecary practice "at the sign of the white cross" on Aldersgate and lived in London for the rest of his life. His interest in natural history may have come from visits to the garden of the Society for Apothecaries or at Fulham Palace. Early naturalist influences included John Watts and fellow apothecary Samuel Doody. The Temple Coffee House Botany Club, an informal group set up around 1689 by several people, including Dr Hans Sloane, was a place of botanical discussion. By 1691, the club included Martin Lister, Tancred Robinson, John Watts, Nehemiah Grew, William Sherard, Samuel Doody, Leonard Plukenet, Charles Hatton, Adam Buddle, and Samuel Dale. Petiver began to collect objects of natural history through his networks and his office became a centre for visiting travellers and collectors. Collectors and correspondents included Rev. John Banister from Virginia, Samuel Browne in Madras, surgeon Edward Bartar in Africa, John Smyth in Jamaica, and John Dickinson in Bermuda. In 1695 he published a catalogue, the first of many, of his collections as Musei Petiverani Centuria Prima Rariora Naturae Continens.
He managed numerous specimens received by post and was routinely sending collection instructions to his correspondents (he had nearly 80 in America). One visitor, Zacharias von Uffenbach, noted that his specimens were poorly documented and heaped into a cabinet unworthy of display. In 1700 he was appointed as Apothecary to the Charterhouse. Patrick Blair promoted Petiver's publications in Scotland. Petiver himself did not travel much with visits restricted to Bristol and Cambridge and in 1711 to the Netherlands. He was known for his administrative ability which he extended to the Royal Society to which he (along with Samuel Doody) was elected in 1695 and Society of Apothecaries.
He never married and was found dead around 2 April 1718 (incorrectly noted as 20 April in some sources) after a long illness. His body was taken on 10 April, the pallbearers included Sir Hans Sloane, Dr Levit and four other physicians and was buried at St Botolph Church on Aldersgate.
Petiver visited the Netherlands in 1711 on behalf of Sloane to study the collections of the Dutch entomologist Paul Hermann. He also met Boerhaave and other Dutch naturalists of the period and received an honorary degree from the University of Leiden. He recorded many English folk-names for butterflies, also coining some himself, and wrote some of the first butterfly books that used English names in addition to Latin. He himself was not very proficient in Latin although he was a member of several scholarly societies and an educated gentleman. He named the white admiral butterfly, and gave the name Argynnini to another group of butterflies after the Latin word for a chequered dice box. He called skippers "hogs", swallowtails "Royal Williams", Lasiommata as "Enfield Eyes" and marbled whites as "Half-Mourners".
Petiver received many specimens, seeds and much other material from overseas correspondents including Samuel Browne and Edward Bulkley in Chennai, Jezreel Jones in Barbary, and the Czech Jesuit Georg Joseph Kamel in Manila.
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