Edward Lhuyd (Welsh: Hloo-id, pronounced [ˈɬuɪd]; usually rewritten as Llwyd in recent times) (1660 – 30 June 1709) was a Welsh naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer and antiquary. He is also known by the Latinized form of his name, Eduardus Luidius.
Lhuyd was born in Loppington, Shropshire, the illegitimate son of Edward Lloyd of Llanforda, Oswestry and Bridget Pryse of Llansantffraid, near Talybont, Ceredigion, and was a pupil and later a master at Oswestry Grammar School. His family belonged to the gentry of south-west Wales; though well-established, his family was not well-off, and his father experimented with agriculture and industry in a manner that brought him into contact with the new science of the day. Lhuyd attended grammar school in Oswestry and went up to Jesus College, Oxford in 1682, but dropped out before his graduation. In 1684, he was appointed assistant to Robert Plot, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and replaced him as Keeper in 1690; he held this post until 1709.
Whilst employed by the Ashmolean he travelled extensively. A visit to Snowdonia in 1688 allowed him to construct for John Ray's Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicorum a list of flora local to that region. After 1697, Lhuyd visited every county in Wales, and then travelled to Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany and the Isle of Man. In 1699, with financial aid from his friend Isaac Newton, he published Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, a catalogue of fossils collected from places around England, mostly Oxford, and now held in the Ashmolean. In 1707, having been assisted in his research by fellow Welsh scholar Moses Williams, he published the first volume of Archaeologia Britannica: an Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of Great Britain, from Travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland and Scotland. Lhuyd noted the similarity between the two Celtic language families: Brythonic or P–Celtic (Breton, Cornish and Welsh); and Goidelic or Q–Celtic (Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic). He argued that the Brythonic languages originated in Gaul (France), and that the Goidelic languages originated in the Iberian Peninsula. Lhuyd concluded that as the languages had been of Celtic origin, the people who spoke those languages were Celts. From the 18th century, the peoples of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales were known increasingly as Celts, and are regarded as the modern Celtic nations today. This book is also an important source for its linguistic description of the Cornish language.
In the late 17th century Lhuyd had been contacted by a group of scholars, led by John Keigwin of Mousehole, who were trying to preserve and further the Cornish language and he accepted the invitation to travel to Cornwall to study the language. Early Modern Cornish was the subject of a study published by Lhuyd in 1702, and differs from the medieval language in having a considerably simpler structure and grammar.
Cymdeithas Edward Llwyd, the National Naturalists' Society of Wales, is named after him.
A bust of Lhuyd stands outside the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, immediately adjacent to the National Library of Wales.
- Delair, Justin B. and William A.S. Sarjeant. "The earliest discoveries of dinosaurs: the records re-examined." Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 113 (2002): 185-197.
- Emery, Frank. Edward Lhuyd. 1971.
- Evans, Dewi W. and Brynley F. Roberts (eds.). Archæologia Britannica: Texts and Translations. Celtic Studies Publications 10. 2007. Description.
- Gunther, R.T. The Life and Letters of Edward Lhuyd. 1945.
- Roberts, Brynley F. Edward Lhuyd, the Making of a Scientist. 1980.
- Williams, Derek R. Prying into every hole and corner: Edward Lhuyd in Cornwall in 1700. 1993.
- Williams, Derek R. Edward Lhuyd, 1660-1709: A Shropshire Welshman. 2009.
- "Never at rest" A biography of Isaac Newton by Richard S. Westfall ISBN 0521274354 pp581,
- Biography of Edward Lhuyd from the Canolfan Edward Llwyd, a centre for the study of science through Welsh.