Sir E. Ray Lankester, K.C.B., F.R.S

Abstract

EARLY in the year 1879 I received a letter from the eminent comparative anatomist, Kitchen Parker, advising me to come over to Cambridge to take Francis Balfour's course of lectures in comparative embryology. I sailed from New York two days later, and by far the leading personal impression of my life was in meeting Francis Balfour in the great court of Trinity College, Cambridge. At this first moment he seemed to me a superman, and the impression was continually strengthened during the frequent and ever memorable contacts in lecture room, laboratory, afternoon bicycling trips, and evening dinners in Balfour's rooms. On these weekly occasions he was wont to invite two or three of his students, including William B. Scott and myself, to meet sympathetic colleagues of his from London, Cambridge, and Oxford. Among the latter I recall especially young Oscar Wilde, who was just beginning to attract attention; Henry N. Moseley, fresh from the Challenger voyage; and E. Ray Lankester, then professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at University College, London.