Early years -- From medicine to science -- Government as patron -- Envoy to Europe -- Last years of uncertainty -- The professor at Cambridge -- The pattern of a young man's thoughts and deeds -- "Where plants have no Latin names"--The personal revolution of 1848 -- An American in world botany -- The waking hours of an overloaded botanist -- Gray's mind and "the threat of Agassiz" -- Darwin and Japan : the summit of Gray's career -- The immediate impact of the Origin of species -- The crest of the Darwinian debate -- Years of war -- Transition from professor to patriarch -- A theist in the age of Darwin -- The patriarch of new plant sciences -- Last days, 1886-1888.