Ray Lankester

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Sir E. Ray Lankester
British Museum (Natural History)
Author abbrev. (botany)Lank.

Sir Edwin Ray Lankester

zoologist.[1][2]

An

Oxford University. He was the third Director of the Natural History Museum, London, and was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.[3]

Life

Ray Lankester was born on 15 May 1847 on Burlington Street

Phebe Lankester. Ray Lankester was probably named after the naturalist John Ray: his father had just edited the memorials of John Ray for the Ray Society
.

In 1855 Ray went to boarding school at

St Paul's School. His university education was at Downing College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford;[6] he transferred from Downing, after five terms, at his parents' behest because Christ Church had better teaching in the form of the newly appointed George Rolleston.[7]

Lankester achieved first-class honours in 1868. His education was rounded off by study visits to

MA
.

Lankester therefore had a far better education than most English biologists of the previous generation, such as

Huxley, Wallace and Bates. Even so, it could be argued that the influence of his father Edwin and his friends were just as important. Huxley[8] was a close friend of the family, and whilst still a child Ray met Hooker, Henfrey, Clifford, Gosse, Owen, Forbes, Carpenter, Lyell, Murchison, Henslow and Darwin.[9]

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 colourful and forceful, as befitted an admirer of Huxley, for whom he worked as a demonstrator when a young man. In his personal manner he was not so adept as Huxley, and he made enemies by his rudeness.[10] This undoubtedly damaged and limited the second half of his career.[11][page needed]

Lankester appears, thinly disguised, in several novels. He is the model for Sir Roderick Dover in

The Lost World,[13] but Doyle himself said that Challenger was based on a professor of physiology at the University of Edinburgh named William Rutherford.[14][15]

Lankester never married. In 1895, he was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest while in the company of a group of female prostitutes on the street, but was acquitted.[16] (It is incorrect, as has been alleged,[17] that the charge concerned homosexual offences.) He died in London on 13 August 1929.

A finely decorated memorial plaque to him can be seen at the Golders Green Crematorium, Hoop Lane, London.

Career

Portion of a ripe ovary of Sepia (cuttlefish) showing ova of various sizes and some empty capsules c, c. From Contributions to the developmental history of the Mollusca.

Lankester became a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1873. He co-edited the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science which his father had founded. From 1869 until his death he edited this journal (jointly with his father, 1869–1871).[1] He worked as one of Huxley's team at the new buildings in South Kensington, and after the death of Francis Balfour became Huxley's intended successor.

Lankester was appointed

Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1908.[21]

At University College London (the 'Godless Institute of Gower Street') Lankester taught

biometry with Francis Galton (1822–1911) and Karl Pearson (1857–1936). He followed Lankester to Oxford in 1899.[22]

Vanity Fair
1905

After Huxley the most important influence on his thought was

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".[23] Those he influenced (in addition to Weldon) included Edwin Stephen Goodrich (Linacre chair in zoology at Oxford 1921–1946) and (indirectly) Julian Huxley (the evolutionary synthesis). In turn their disciples, such as E. B. Ford (ecological genetics), Gavin de Beer (embryology and evolution), Charles Elton (ecology) and Alister Hardy (marine biology) held sway during the middle years of the 20th century.

As a zoologist Lankester was a comparative anatomist of the

Arachnida. His Limulus
specimens can still be seen in the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL today. He was also a voluminous writer on biology for the general readership; in this he followed the example of his old mentor, Huxley.

He published over 200 papers during his career. For an overview of his scientific work, see the obituary notice by Edwin S. Goodrich.[3]

Invertebrates and degeneration

Lankester's books Developmental history of the Mollusca (1875) and Degeneration: a chapter in Darwinism (1880) established him as a leader in the study of invertebrate life histories. In Degeneration he adapted some ideas of

barnacles which is a parasite of crabs, the female is little more than "a sac of eggs, and absorbed nourishment from the juices of its host by root-like processes" (+ wood-engraved
illustration). He called this degenerative evolutionary process in parasites retrogressive metamorphosis.

Lankester pointed out that retrograde metamorphosis could be seen in many species that were not, strictly speaking, degenerate. "Were it not for the recapitulative phases of the

locomotion, and are probably derived from lizards. Thus degeneration or retrogressive metamorphosis sometimes occurs as species adapt to changes in habit
or way of life.

As evidence of degeneration, Lankester identifies the recapitulative development of the individual. This is the idea propagated by Ernst Haeckel as a source of evolutionary evidence (recapitulation theory). As antecedents of degeneration, Lankester lists:[26]

1. Parasitism
2. Fixity or immobility (
sessile
habit)
3. Vegetative nutrition
4. Excessive reduction in size

He also considered the axolotl, a mole salamander, which can breed whilst still in its gilled larval form without maturing into a terrestrial adult. Lankester noted that this process could take the subsequent evolution of the race into a totally different and otherwise improbable direction.[27] This idea, which Lankester called super-larvation, is now called neoteny.

Lankester extended the idea of degeneration to human societies, which carries little significance today, but it is a good example of a biological concept invading social science. Lankester and H. G. Wells used the idea as a basis for propaganda in favour of social and educational reform.[28]

Trouble at the Museum

In Lankester's time the Natural History Museum had its own building in South Kensington, but in financial and administrative matters it was subordinate to the British Museum. Moreover, the Superintendent (= Director) of the NHM was the subordinate of the Principal Librarian of the BM, a fact which was bound to cause trouble since that august person was not a scientist.[29][30][31] We can see that the conflict which took place was one aspect of the struggle undertaken, in their different ways, by Owen, Hooker, Huxley and Tyndall to emancipate science from enslavement by traditional forces.

There was trouble from the moment Lankester put forward his candidature for the office vacated by Sir

palaeographer, was also the Secretary to the Trustees, and hence in a strong position to get his own way. There is good evidence that Thompson, an efficient and authoritarian figure, intended to take control of the whole Museum, including the Natural History departments.[32][33] In the absence of Huxley, who had led most of the battles for over thirty years, it was left to the younger generation to struggle for the independence of science, Mitchell, Poulton, and Weldon were his main supporters, and together they lobbied the Trustees, the Government and in the press to get their point over. Finally Lankester was appointed instead of Lazarus Fletcher (a relative nonentity).[34]

Lankester was appointed in 1898, and the outcome was inevitable. Eight years of conflict with Maunde Thompson followed, with Thompson constantly interfering in the affairs of the museum and obstructing Lankester's attempt to improve the museum. Lankester resigned in 1907, at the direction of Thompson, who had discovered a clause in the regulations which allowed him to call for the resignation of officials at the age of 60. Lazarus Fletcher was appointed in his stead. There was a vast clamour in the press, and from foreign zoologists protesting at the treatment of Lankester. That Lankester had some friends in high places was shown by the Archbishop of Canterbury offering him an enhanced pension, and the knighthood that was bestowed on him the next year.

The issues raised by this affair did not end there. Eventually the NHM gained, first, its administrative freedom, then finally there was a complete separation from the BM. Today the British Library, the British Museum and the Natural History Museum all occupy separate buildings, and have complete legal, administrative and financial independence from each other.

Rationalism

Sir Edwin Ray Lankester in 1918

Lankester had close family connections with

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 a friend of Karl Marx in the latter's later years and was among the few persons present at his funeral.[35]

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).

Publications

His professional writings include the following:

The Lankester Pamphlets are held at the National Marine Biological Library at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. These consist of 43 volumes of reprints, with an author index.[39]

The standard author abbreviation Lank. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[40]

Lectures

In 1903 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Extinct Animals.

References

  1. ^ a b New International Encyclopaedia.
  2. doi:10.1038/124345a0
    .
  3. ^ a b Goodrich, Edwin S. (1931). "The Scientific Work of Edwin Ray Lankester" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. s2-74 (295): 363–382.
  4. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X
    .
  5. ^ Addison, Henry Robert; Oakes, Charles Henry; Lawson, William John; Sladen, Douglas Brooke Wheelton (1907). "Lankester, Edwin Ray". Who's Who. 59: 1019.
  6. ^ "Lankester, Edwin Ray (LNKR864ER)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  7. ^ Lester, pp. 17–19.
  8. ^ The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. Vol. I. London: Macmillan & Co. 1898. Upon Huxley's death, as a memorial tribute, Lankester and Sir Michael Foster edited his collected works in four volumes.
  9. ^ Lester, pp. 9–11.
  10. ^ Huxley, Julian (1970). Memories. Allen & Unwin. p. 129.
  11. ISBN 978-1-108-04404-2
    .
  12. marxists.org
    . Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  13. ^ Lester, pp. 60, 187–8, 199–202.
  14. ^ pxxiii in the Oxford ed of The Lost World. William Rutherford (1839–1899), holder of the Edinburgh Chair of Physiology from 1874.
  15. ^ Arthur Conan Doyle 1930. Memories and adventures. Murray, London. p. 32.
  16. ^ The Professor And The Policeman, Birmingham Daily Post, 7 October 1895, p5.
  17. ^ McKenna, Neil "The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde", Century, 2003, p. 250.
  18. ^ "Edwin Ray Lankester". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 9 February 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  19. ^ "E. Ray Lankester". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  20. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  21. ^ Lester.
  22. ^ History of the Grant Museum 1827 – present. ucl.ac.uk.
  23. ISBN 978-0674364462
    .
  24. ^ Dohrn, Anton 1875. Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Principe des Functionswechsels. Engelmann, Leipzig.
  25. ^ Lankester, E. Ray (1880) Degeneration: a chapter in Darwinism, p. 33.
  26. ^ Lankester, E. Ray (1880) Degeneration: a chapter in Darwinism, p. 52.
  27. ^ Lester, p. 87.
  28. PMID 16769556
    .
  29. ISBN 0712906185
  30. ISBN 0950727601
  31. ISBN 9780565090302
  32. ^ Mitchell, P. Chalmers (1937) My fill of days. London. pp. 170ff.
  33. ^ Sir John Evans to Lankester, Lankester family papers; reported in Lester, pp. 128–9.
  34. ^ Lester, Chapter 11, pp. 127ff.
  35. JSTOR 2709363
    .
  36. ^ See Overview of all volumes that appeared of A Treatise on Zoology in Biodiversity Heritage Library.
  37. ^ Review in The Zoologist, wikisource logo 4th series, vol 4, issue 707 (May, 1900), p. 242–3.
  38. ^ Review in The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5, issue 725 (November, 1901), p. 432–433.
  39. ^ The Lankester Pamphlets. National Marine Biological Library.
  40. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Lank.

Bibliography

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

Further reading

External links

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Preceded by Fullerian Professor of Physiology
1898–1901 		Succeeded by
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