Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (15 May 1847 – 13 August 1929) was a British zoologist. An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was the third Director of the Natural History Museum, London, and was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.
Life Ray Lankester was born on 15 May 1847 on Burlington Street in London, the son of Edwin Lankester, a coroner and doctor-naturalist who helped eradicate cholera in London, and his wife, the botanist and author 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 Leatherhead, and in 1858 to St Paul's School. His university education was at Downing College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford; 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. Lankester achieved first-class honours in 1868. His education was rounded off by study visits to Vienna, Leipzig and Jena, and he did some work at the Stazione Zoologica at Naples. He took the examination to become a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and studied under Thomas H. Huxley before taking his 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 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. 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. Arthur Conan Doyle speculated that this damaged and limited the second half of his career. Lankester appears, thinly disguised, in several novels. He is the model for Sir Roderick Dover in H. G. Wells' Marriage (Wells had been one of his students), and in Robert Briffault's Europa, which contains a portrait of Lankester, including his friendship with Karl Marx. (Lankester was one of the thirteen people at Marx's funeral.) He has also been suggested as the model for Professor Challenger in Doyle's The Lost World, but Doyle himself said that Challenger was based on a professor of physiology at the University of Edinburgh named William Rutherford. 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. It is incorrect, as has been alleged, 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 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). 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 Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy and curator of what is now the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London from 1874 to 1890, Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Merton College, Oxford, 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 and served as its second President between 1890 and 1929. Influential as teacher and writer on biological theories, comparative anatomy, and evolution, Lankester studied the protozoa, mollusca, and arthropoda. Lankester was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1902, and an International Member of both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 1903. He was knighted in 1907, awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1913, and the Linnean Society of London's Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1908. At University College London, one person who attended his class was Raphael Weldon (1860–1906). Another interesting student was Alfred Gibbs Bourne, who went on to hold senior positions in biology and education in the Indian Empire.
After Huxley the most important influence on his thought was August Weismann, the German zoologist who rejected Lamarckism, 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. Ernst Mayr said "It was Lankester who founded a school of selectionism at Oxford". 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. Lankester was a comparative anatomist of the Huxley school, working mostly on invertebrates. 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.
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