Edwin Lankester

Edwin Lankester FRS, FRMS, MRCS (23 April 1814 – 30 October 1874) was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England.

Edwin Lankester was born in 1814 in Melton, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, to 'poor but clever parents' according to his son E. Ray Lankester (Lester 1995). His father was a builder.

Edwin married Phebe Pope in 1845, daughter of a former mill-owner. She was 19 at the time of marriage, became a botanist and microscopist, published books for children and wrote natural history articles. They had a total of eleven children of whom eight survived – four boys and four girls. Thomas Henry Huxley became a close friend of the family, and visited often. John Stevens Henslow, Darwin's tutor, was also a family friend. A born teacher, he introduced Edwin's son Ray to the delights of fossil collecting. Through his association with East Suffolk and his friendship with Henslow, Lankester became an early and active Honorary Member of the Ipswich Museum, of which his son Ray Lankester was afterwards President (1901–1929).

E. B. Ford, the ecological geneticist, said of Edwin: "Lankester was a close personal friend of Darwin's and was so deeply impressed by him that he was determined that one of his sons should become a great biologist, He named all three of his sons suitably: Forbes, Ray and Owen!" (p. 338 in Mayr and Provine). But, alas for this excellent story, Edwin had another son, his second, whom he named Rushton. Rushton emigrated to Java, married, and raised a family, the only one of Edwin's offspring to do so. The lack of productivity in this otherwise capable family was distinctly unusual at that time.

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