Isaac Gray (398)

Isaac Gray (28 February 1747–1792) was a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1781. Most likely born in Philadelphia to the well-connected Gray family, Isaac Gray studied at Friends Writing School, then entered friends Latin School in 1757. He may have been involved in a textile manufactory, planned in Carpenter’s Hall in 1775. In 1794, David Rittenhouse introduced one of Gray’s studies of an onion to the Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal. Gray’s 1780 Observations on the Growth and Propagation of a Proliferous Onion accounts his receiving and planting an onion that produced bulbs out of itself instead of merely dropping seeds into the ground. He lived in Kingsessing, where local landmarks still bear his family name.