February 10th
- American naturalist who wrote the first botanical textbook published in the U.S. His Elements of Botany (1803) which reached a sixth edition, including three after his death.
- In 1789, aged 23, he became a professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
- He brought together 1,674 specimens of native plants between 1797 and 1807 to form a herbarium that was the largest of the time.
