Background
Miers was born in London to a jeweller from Yorkshire, and showed interest in mineralogy and chemistry from an early age.
Miers was born in London to a jeweller from Yorkshire, and showed interest in mineralogy and chemistry from an early age.
His first published work was a monograph on nitrogen which appeared in the Annals of Philosophy in 1814. In May 1819 Miers arrived in Santiago, Chile, having arranged the clandestine transport of coin presses, and settled at Concón, near Valparaísouthern He developed business ventures with Lord Cochrane, then head of the Chilean Navy.
They built a flour mill, developed plans for a ranch at Quintero, and intended becoming the major supplier of salt beef, biscuits and other supplies to the Navy
In 1825 he returned to England, and the following year published Travels in Chile and Louisiana Plata, the first of several works documenting the plants of South America.
Towards the end of the decade he returned to Argentina to work on contracts with the Argentinian mint. Political instability ended this work in 1831 and he moved to Rio de Janeiro to fulfil a similar contract with the Brazilian government, returning to England in 1838.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and assisted in the editing of the papers of others, as well as editing his own. His most important work was Contributions to the Botany of South America (1870).
Other well-known works were On the Apocynaceae of South America (1878) and Illustrations of South American Plants (1789-1879).
Several taxa are named in his honour. This botanist is denoted by the author transcript Miers when citing a botanical name.
Royal Society.