Edwin Ray Lankester

English naturalist

• Born: May 15, 1847
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: August 15, 1929
• Place of death: London, England

After studying invertebrates, Lankester systematized the field of embryology, and he researched major groups of living and fossil animals. He wrote more than one hundred scientific essays, mostly dealing with comparative anatomy and paleontology, and his series of books made scientific matters understandable and interesting to nonscientists.

Early Life

Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (LAHNG-kesh-tehr) was the son of Edwin Lankester, a medical doctor who served as a coroner and lectured and wrote articles about natural history, diseases, and foods. Lankester’s mother, née Phebe Pope, was also interested in science; she both assisted her husband with his scientific articles and wrote her own on botany and on health.

When he was eleven years old, Lankester entered St. Paul’s School, where he earned several classical prizes and won cups for sculling and the long jump. At the age of seventeen, he entered Downing College, Cambridge, on a scholarship, but he transferred to Christ Church, Oxford, in his second year and won a scholarship there for his junior year.

In 1868, Lankester was graduated from Oxford with first-class honors in natural science and was given a scholarship in geology. With this and the Radcliffe Traveling Fellowship granted him in 1870, he studied at Vienna, Leipzig, and Naples. He returned to Oxford to teach for two years and then became a professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at University College, London, until 1889.

Lankester was welcomed to London by Thomas Huxley, a British biologist and surgeon, and other scientists who had known him since childhood. Lankester’s personal charm earned for him the respect and affection of these men as well as a wider circle of friends. He was sincere, unprejudiced, and tolerant of differences in method and opinion. Especially kind to young workers, he listened sympathetically to others and was gentle and affectionate. His wit and anecdotes made him a delightful companion as guest or host. He enjoyed golf, cards, country walks, and fireside chats.

Although he had many close friends, Lankester never married. Robust in appearance and able to handle stress, his health nevertheless was delicate, and he suffered several illnesses. As he grew older he experienced problems with indigestion, bronchitis, and depression.

As a professor he quickly became known by the success of his lectures and the results of investigations by his students and himself. His clear and skillful illustrations instilled in his students his own enthusiasm for science.

Life’s Work

After his graduation from Oxford, Lankester assisted his father in editing the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. Two years later, he became the editor and held that position until his death sixty years later. During that time he became one of England’s most noted zoologists and received major honors in his field.

These honors recognized his varied activities, his energy in teaching, and his philosophical thinking. His work benefited because of his principle that speculation should be the servant, not the master, of the biologist. In 1875, Lankester was accepted as a member of the Royal Society, a scientific association that supports and promotes scientific research. He was Royal Medalist in 1885 and served as the society’s vice president from 1882 to 1896. In 1884, Lankester founded the Marine Biological Association, serving as its president in 1892. The association’s laboratory has aided in the training of British biologists.

Lankester was appointed Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford in 1890. In addition to teaching, he reorganized the University Museum to make it useful in teaching and beneficial to the educational community. This experience proved invaluable when he became director of the British Museum (Natural History) in 1898, resigning from his Oxford post. Conflicts with the museum committees and opposition from the trustees frustrated his plans for the museum, however, and he resigned his post in 1907, the year he was knighted.

Despite his varied duties, Lankester was first a professional zoologist. His curiosity about nature, his observations of living creatures, his skill in dissection and microscopy, and his patience in acquiring facts combined to give him a wide interest in zoology and detailed knowledge of many of its branches. He wrote well, and the ability to coordinate and arrange facts made his scientific writings easy to understand. He loved to teach zoology to beginners and laypersons, and he could encourage researchers with criticism and praise in any area.

Lankester’s brilliance and abilities in science were not matched by great success with officialdom. Often in defending a cause he would act impulsively and even violently, never bothering to apologize or rectify his mistakes. His character and intelligence made it almost certain that he was promoting the best course of action, but his impetuous behavior ruined his arguments and position; officials saw his conduct, not his wisdom. A misunderstanding with the University of Edinburgh, a lawsuit with Oxford University, and his poor relationships with the committees of the Natural History Museum all occurred because of disputes accentuated by his imprudence.

Some of Lankester’s best work was in the area of morphology, the study of the form and structure of plants and animals, without regard to function. He saw beauty in the varieties of animal form, and he arranged them in categories, explaining them clearly. His essays on classification and natural history were illuminating, and he contributed to almost every branch of zoology.

Lankester wrote widely about zoology and more general problems of science. His books included On Comparative Longevity in Man and the Lower Animals (1870), The Advancement of Science (1890), The Kingdom of Man (1907), and Great and Small Things (1923). These and other writings were read widely by the general public as well as the scientific community.

In addition to his work in zoology, Lankester studied and promoted neo-Darwinism and followed Gregor Mendel’s work in hybridizing cultivated plants. He had a keen interest in the application of bacteriology and protozoology to preventive medicine, and through his Royal Society work he encouraged the investigations into sleeping sickness and other tropical diseases. Close friends with Louis Pasteur and Elie Metchnikoff, the institute’s director, he often visited the Pasteur Institute in Paris and was proud to have contributed to medical knowledge and theory.

Lankester was highly respected by the scientific community, and this respect was demonstrated by the honorary degrees given him by Leeds, Exeter, and Christ Church College. He was still writing and studying when he died in London on August 15, 1929, after a short illness.

Significance

The scientific discoveries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revolutionized life and awakened a hope that humans might master nature. This hope fostered a faith in science and an enthusiasm for learning. Sir Edwin Ray Lankester’s books, which conveyed his zeal and knowledge in the layperson’s language, were popular in this atmosphere because they made scientific achievements and information accessible to the public. The Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science , which he edited, held an international reputation, and his encyclopedia articles were widely read.

Because of his own enthusiasm for comparative anatomy, Lankester inspired numerous students and colleagues to continue their own study and research. His most distinguished pupil, Edwin Goodrich, continued Lankester’s work in zoology and spread his teaching.

Lankester brought order to an entire branch of biology when he studied the structure and embryos of invertebrates, systematized the field of embryology, and invented new technical terms to describe his discoveries. Adding greatly to humanity’s knowledge of comparative anatomy, he researched major groups of living and fossil animals, from protozoa to mammals. He then showed the basic similarities in structure and close relationships among spiders, scorpions, and horseshoe crabs.

Scientists in the nineteenth century were using science for the power it gave to human society through mechanical and electrical devices, military weapons, food preservation, and control over disease. They discovered that science could lead to profit as well as to knowledge. Lankester, on the other hand, still saw the value of science in its gathering of information, its observations of nature, and its satisfaction to humankind’s inner being. Pure science was, for Lankester, a thing of beauty.

Bibliography

Bowler, Peter J. Life’s Splendid Drama: Evolutionary Biology and the Reconstruction of Life’s Ancestry, 1860-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. A comprehensive and critical study of evolutionary thought, focusing on research about the evolution of particular groups of organisms. Includes information on Lankester’s theories of evolution.

Darwin, Charles. The Illustrated Origin of Species. Abridged and introduced by Richard E. Leakey. New York: Hill & Wang, 1979. An abridgment of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) that explains his theory of evolution, a theory that Lankester advocated, although he later supported the school of neo-Darwinism. In his introduction, Leakey discusses Darwin’s work and its problems, as well as the work of other scientists in that era.

Dubos, Rene J. Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science. Boston: Little, Brown, 1950. This biography of Lankester’s friend and contemporary illuminates the work of other scientists of that period, and it includes background on previous scientific philosophy.

Gould, Stephen Jay. “A Darwinian Gentleman at Marx’s Funeral.” Natural History 108, no. 7 (September, 1999): 32. Describes the friendship between Lankester and Karl Marx and Lankester’s role in communication between Marx and Darwin.

Lankester, Sir Edwin Ray. Diversions of a Naturalist. New York: Macmillan, 1915. A collection of essays and illustrations about nature suitable for reading by the general public. Contains articles previously written for The Daily Telegraph.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Great and Small Things. London: Methuen, 1923. A miscellaneous collection of short articles related to the study of living things. The articles cover such varied subjects as the gorilla, the liver fluke, and human eyes.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Science from an Easy Chair. London: Methuen, 1910. A collection of brief essays on a variety of scientific subjects, written for the layperson in common language. Readers are encouraged to do further research on ideas that interest them. Includes illustrations.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Science from an Easy Chair: A Second Series. London: Adlard, 1912. An assortment of essays, originally written for The Daily Telegraph, to interest the layperson in scientific matters. Includes subjects such as elephants, smells and perfumes, museums, and parasites.

Metchnikoff, Olga. Life of Elie Metchnikoff: 1845-1916. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. This biography, with a preface by Lankester, describes Metchnikoff’s life, research, and studies in medicine, including his work at the Pasteur Institute. Lankester and Metchnikoff were close friends and interested in each other’s research.