Robert Edmund Grant

Robert Edmond Grant MD FRCPEd FRS FRSE FZS FGS (11 November 1793 – 23 August 1874) was a British anatomist and zoologist.

Grant was born at Argyll Square in Edinburgh (demolished to create Chambers Street) the son of Alexander Grant WS, and his wife, Jane Edmond. He was educated at the High School in Edinburgh then studied Medicine at Edinburgh University. Having obtained his MD at Edinburgh in 1814, Grant gave up medical practice in favour of marine biology and the zoology of invertebrates, living on a legacy from his father. As a materialist and freethinker, and politically radical, he was open to ideas in biology that were considered subversive in the climate of opinion prevailing in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars. He cited Erasmus Darwin's Zoönomia in his doctoral dissertation, a work which introduced the idea of evolution in poetical form.

In 1824 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh his proposer being Dr John Barclay.

He became one of the foremost naturalists of the early 19th century at Edinburgh and subsequently the first Professor of Comparative Anatomy at University College London. He is noted for his influence on the young Charles Darwin and his espousal of Geoffroy's ideas on evolution.

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