Richard Bradley (botanist)

Little is known about Bradley's childhood aside from an early interest in gardening and the fact that he lived in the vicinity of London, a city at the time with many amateur naturalists.

[1] Though Bradley lacked a university education, his first publication, Treatise of Succulent Plants, gained him traction with influential patrons like James Petiver and later, Hans Sloane.

He spent the next decade back in England writing treatises on topics related to this central interest, like weather, fertiliser, productivity, and plant hybridisation.

As Bradley was not a wealthy man in his later life, and as this was an unsalaried position, the newly minted academic continued to focus most of his efforts on making a living through publishing.

Though spread across a handful of his papers, when taken together, a unified, biological theory of infectious diseases spanning all life – from plants and animals to humans – emerges.