Edwin Ray Lankester

Born May 15, 1847, in London; died there Aug. 15, 1929. English zoologist and embryologist. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1875).

Lankester became a professor at University College in London in 1874 and at Oxford University in 1890. He was director of the natural history department of the British Museum from 1898 to 1907. His principal works were on extinct fishes and the anatomy and embryology of annelids, mollusks, and arthropods. Lankester’s works on invertebrate taxonomy are especially well known. He divided (1877) phylum Helminthes into three distinct phyla (Platyhelminthes, Nemathelminthes, and Annelida). He proposed a system of the animal world in which the sponges are treated as an independent group.