You will also see a lot of genera attributed to Mr. Gray, below. He was the first person to start tidying up Fries' "everything belongs in big genera" system of classification by creating smaller, more precise genera, by
creating his own
recognizing and validating the genera of ancient authors
and by raising Fries' sub-generic divisions to the genus level
We owe him Grifola and Leccinum, just for starters! Later in the century, this work was taken up by Karsten, Quélet, Patouillard, Kummer, and others.
And, if you've noticed, he also named a lot of our "basic" fungal species, also.
Not much seems to be known about Mr. Gray; I can't find any biographical information on him in sources that have quite a bit for comparable people. And what information there is seems not incontestable: D. L. Hawksworth(1974) gives his date of death as 1828, but R. L. Gilbertson & Ryvarden(1986 - 1987) give it as 1836, quite a difference.
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