John Miers

Who was John Miers?

John Miers, FRS FLS, knight grand cross of the Order of the Rose, was a British botanist and engineer, best known for his work on the flora of Chile and Argentina.

Miers was born in London to a jeweller from Yorkshire, and showed interest in mineralogy and chemistry from an early age. His first published work was a monograph on nitrogen which appeared in the Annals of Philosophy in 1814. After his marriage in 1818 he travelled to South America to participate in a venture to exploit the mineral resource of Chile, particularly copper. However after landing in Buenos Aires his wife came down with childbed fever on the trip across country, and he decided against continuing.

Instead, he started a study of the local flora, which at that time was largely unresearched, In 1825 he returned to England, and the following year published Travels in Chile and La Plata, the first of several works documenting the plants of South America. Towards the end of the decade he returned to Argentina to work on contracts with the Argentinian mint.