Gray was the son of Moses Gray and Roxana Howard Gray, who had moved from New England to upstate New York after the American Revolution. In 1825, he attended Fairfield Academy and after a year began medical lectures at Fairfield's College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of the State of New York. While attending school, he was introduced to the fields of chemistry, mineralogy, and especially botany. He began collecting plants during his apprenticeship in Bridgewater, New York, and was in close contact with the leading botanist in the United States; John Torrey of New York. Gray ceased his pursuit of a degree in medicine in 1832 and spent the next five years in a series of part-time teaching and library positions while concentrating on botany and making himself so useful to Torrey that he became a full partner in the writing of the Flora of North America. In 1851 Gray befriended Charles Darwin, who he met during a luncheon at Kew Gardens in London. Gray's correspondence with Joseph Dalton Hooker on the geographical distribution of plants so impressed Darwin that he initiated an exchange of letters directly with Gray. Questions from Darwin led Gray to analyze American flora. In 1857 Darwin disclosed to Gray the secret of his theory in a letter that became one of the premises of Darwin 's idea of the origin of species by natural selection. Without being an aggressive lecturer and teacher, Gray was still an important figure in scientific education in his day. His full line of textbooks changed botanical education in the United States from the 1840's into the twentieth century.
Below are images from Botany for Young People: How Plants Behave (1873) and Botany for Young People: How Plants Grow (1858)
Gray was the son of Moses Gray and Roxana Howard Gray, who had moved from New England to upstate New York after the American Revolution. In 1825, he attended Fairfield Academy and after a year began medical lectures at Fairfield's College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of the State of New York. While attending school, he was introduced to the fields of chemistry, mineralogy, and especially botany. He began collecting plants during his apprenticeship in Bridgewater, New York, and was in close contact with the leading botanist in the United States; John Torrey of New York. Gray ceased his pursuit of a degree in medicine in 1832 and spent the next five years in a series of part-time teaching and library positions while concentrating on botany and making himself so useful to Torrey that he became a full partner in the writing of the Flora of North America. In 1851 Gray befriended Charles Darwin, who he met during a luncheon at Kew Gardens in London. Gray's correspondence with Joseph Dalton Hooker on the geographical distribution of plants so impressed Darwin that he initiated an exchange of letters directly with Gray. Questions from Darwin led Gray to analyze American flora. In 1857 Darwin disclosed to Gray the secret of his theory in a letter that became one of the premises of Darwin 's idea of the origin of species by natural selection. Without being an aggressive lecturer and teacher, Gray was still an important figure in scientific education in his day. His full line of textbooks changed botanical education in the United States from the 1840's into the twentieth century. 
