Lankester, Edwin Ray (1847-1929)

English zoologist who made clear morphological distinctions between the different orders of invertebrates. He distinguished between the haemocoel (blood-containing cavity) in Mollusca and Arthropoda and the coelom (fluid-filled cavity) in worms and vertebrates for the first time, showing that whilst functionally similar they have different origins.

Lankester was born in London, son of the prominent scientific writer, Edwin Lankester, and attended Downing College, Cambridge. During his second year at university he moved to Oxford where he graduated in natural sciences from Christchurch College. In 1871 he studied marine zoology in Naples for a year before becoming a fellow and tutor at Exeter College, Oxford. He was made chair of zoology at University College, London 1874, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society the following year (he served as vice-president 1882 and 1896, and received the Royal medal 1885).

He returned to Oxford to take up the Linacre Chair of comparative anatomy in 1891, and made extensive changes to the organization of the zoology specimens in Oxford's University Museum. From 1898 he was the director of the natural history department and keeper of zoology at the British Museum. He was made KCB 1907 and awarded the Copley Medal and the Darwin Wallace Medal.