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'Sir E. Ray Lankester', FRS (May 15, 1847 - August 13, 1929) was a British zoologist, born in London.^[1]
E. (Edwin: his first name was never full spelt) Ray Lankester was the son of Edwin Lankester, also an eminent scientist, who pioneered work in the abolition of cholera in London. Ray Lankester may have been named after the naturalist John Ray. He was a large man with a large presence, of warm human sympathies and in his childhood a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln. His interventions, responses and advocacies were often forceful, as befits an admirer of Thomas Henry Huxley, for whom he worked as a demonstrator when a young man.

Contents

Career

Publications

References

External links

Career

Lankester became Jodrell Professor of Zoology at University College London from 1874 to 1890, Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford University from 1891 to 1898, and director of the Natural History Museum from 1898 to 1907. He was a founder in 1884 of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth. Influential as teacher and writer on biological theories, comparative anatomy, and evolution, Lankester studied the protozoa, mollusca, and arthropoda. He was knighted in 1907, and was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1913.
At University College London (the 'Godless Institute of Gower Street') Lankester taught W.F.R. Weldon (1860-1906) who went on to succeed him in the chair at UCL. Another interesting student was Alfred Gibbs Bourne, who went on to hold senior positions in biology and education in the Indian Empire. When Lankester left to take up the Linacre chair at Oxford in 1891, the Grant Museum at UCL continued to grow under Weldon who added a number of extremely rare specimens. Weldon is perhaps best known for founding the science of biometry with Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Karl Pearson (1857-1936). He followed Lankester to Oxford in 1899.^[2]

After Huxley the most important influence on his thought was August Weismann, the German zoologist who rejected Lamarkism, and wholeheartedly advocated natural selection as the key force in evolution at a time when other biologists had doubts. Weismann's separation of germplasm (genetic material) from soma (somatic cells) was an idea which took many years before its significance was generally appreciated. Lankester was one of the first to see its importance: his full acceptance of selection came after reading Weismann's essays, some of which he translated into English.
Lankester was hugely influential, though perhaps more as a teacher than as a researcher. Ernst Mayr said "It was Lankester who founded a school of selectionism at Oxford" (Mayr, ''The growth of biological thought'', Harvard 1982 p535). Those he influenced included Edwin Stephen Goodrich (Linacre chair in zoology at Oxford 1921-46), Julian Huxley (the evolutionary synthesis), Gavin de Beer (embryology and evolution) and E.B. Ford (ecological genetics and selection).
As a zoologist he was the first to show the relationship of the horseshoe crab or ''Limulus'' to the Arachnida. His ''Limulus'' specimens can still be seen in the UCL museum today. He was also a voluminous writer on biology for the general readership; in this he followed the example of his old mentor, Huxley.
Lankester had close family connections with Suffolk (the Woodbridge and Felixstowe area), and was an active member of the Rationalist group associated with the circle of Thomas Huxley, Samuel Laing and others. He was a friend of the Rationalist Edward Clodd of Aldeburgh. From 1901 to his death in 1929 he was Honorary President of the Ipswich Museum. He became convinced of the human workmanship of the (now unfavoured) 'Pre-palaeolithic' implements and rostro-carinates, and championed their cause at the Royal Society in 1910-1912. Through correspondence he became the scientific mentor of the Suffolk prehistorian James Reid Moir (1879-1944). He was, peculiarly, a friend of Karl Marx in the latter's later years and was among the few persons present in his funeral.
Lankester was active in attempting to expose the frauds of Spiritualist mediums during the 1920s. He was an important writer of popular science, his weekly newspaper columns over many years being assembled and reprinted in a series of books entitled ''Science from an Easy Chair'' (first series, 1910; second series, 1912). After 1869 he edited the ''Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science'' (jointly with his father, 1869-71).
A finely decorated memorial plaque to Lankester can be seen at the Golders Green Crematorium, Hoop Lane, London.

Publications

His writings include:

★ ''A Monograph of the Cephalaspidian Fishes'' (1870)

★ ''Developmental History of the Mollusca'' (1875)

★ ''Degeneration: a chapter in Darwinism'' (1880)

★ ''Limulus: An Arachnid'' (1881)

★ ''The Advancement of Science'' (1889), collected essays

★ ''Zoölogical Articles'' 1891)

★ ''A Treatise on Zoölogy'' (1900-09), (editor)

★ ''Extinct Animals'' (1905)

★ ''Nature and Man'' (1905)

★ ''The Kingdom of Man'' (1907)

References

1. New International Encyclopaedia
2. History of the Grant Museum 1827 - present

3. Lester, Joe. ''E. Ray Lankester: the making of modern British biology'' (edited, with additions, by Peter J. Bowler). BSHS Monograph #9. 1995.

External links

Scanned books on the Internet archive

★ Secrets of earth and sea (1920)

★ Zoological articles contributed to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (1891)

★ Diversions of a naturalist (1915)

★ Science from an easy chair (1913)

★ The kingdom of man (1907)

★ The advancement of science. Occasional essays & addresses (1890)

★ Science from an easy chair; a second series (1913)

★ A treatise on zoology (1900-1909)

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★ Volume 1

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★ Volume 2

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★ Volume 3

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★ Volume 4

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★ Volume 5

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★ Volume 6

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★ Volume 7

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★ Volume 8

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★ Volume 9