William Sole was a British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 botanist.

Born in Little Thetford

Little Thetford

Little Thetford is a small village and civil parish south of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England, about by road from London. The village is built on a boulder clay island surrounded by flat fenland countryside, typical of settlements in this part of the East of England...

, Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

, Sole studied at the King's School, Ely, then served an apprenticeship as an apothecary

Apothecary

Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist and some caregivers....

 in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

. On qualifying, he moved to Bath.

In his spare time, Sole undertook influential botanical research, specialising in the study of mints

Lamiaceae

The mints, taxonomically known as Lamiaceae or Labiatae, are a family of flowering plants. They have traditionally been considered closely related to Verbenaceae, but in the 1990s, phylogenetic studies suggested that many genera classified in Verbenaceae belong instead in Lamiaceae...

 in his garden, where he tried to replicate natural conditions as closely as possible. In 1798, he published Menthae Britannicae, and the terminology he used in the text was adopted generally throughout the nineteenth century. He also researched grass

Grass

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges and the rushes . The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns ...

es and the local flora of Bath, and was elected as one of the first associates of the Linnean Society.

Sprengel named the genus Solea for Sole, although this was later merged into Viola.