author
Christopher Merret
1614–1695
Best remembered for recording an early method for making sparkling wine, this 17th-century English physician and natural historian also helped map the plants, birds, and butterflies of Britain. His work sits at the lively meeting point of medicine, experiment, and early modern science.
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About the author
Born in Winchcombe in 1614 and later active in London, Christopher Merret was an English physician, natural historian, and one of the early figures associated with the Royal Society. He studied at Oxford, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and built a reputation as a careful compiler of knowledge across medicine and the natural world.
Merret is often remembered today for a 1662 paper that described adding sugar to wine to create a sparkling drink, an observation that gives him a small but famous place in the history of champagne. He also wrote Pinax rerum naturalium Britannicarum in 1667, a pioneering catalog of British natural history that included early lists of birds and butterflies.
Beyond those milestones, he worked on topics as varied as glassmaking, plants, and experimental science. His career shows how wide-ranging a learned writer could be in the 1600s: part doctor, part collector of facts, and part guide to the emerging scientific culture of his time.