Francis Joseph Cole FRS (3 February 1872 – 27 January 1959) was an English zoologist and a professor at the University of Reading for 33 years.
Education
Cole was born in London and educated at
Sir Walter St. John's School
Sir Walter St John's was founded in 1700 for twenty boys of the village of Battersea. As the population and the English educational system changed, so did the school. The school was colloquially known as "Sinjuns" and was finally closed in 1986-7. ...
,
Battersea
Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park.
History
Batter ...
Cole was a lecturer in zoology at the University of Liverpool from 1897 until 1906, when he became Professor of Zoology at the University of Reading, the first holder of the post. He then began setting up the
Cole Museum of Zoology
The Cole Museum of Zoology is a university museum, part of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading. It is located on the university's Whiteknights Campus in the town of Reading, Berkshire, England.
The collection was est ...
, encouraging overseas visitors to the Department to donate specimens. He remained at Reading, until retiring in 1939, but carried on writing in retirement. He wrote in particular on comparative anatomy and the history of zoology, after his early work on the morphology of fish. His works included a "History of Protozoology" (1926), "Early Theories of Sexual Generation" (1930) and a "History of Comparative Anatomy from Aristotle to the Eighteenth Century" (1944).
He retired from Reading in 1939 being replaced by Prof Charles Henry O'Donoghue.
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
in 1908. He was the 1950
Wilkins Lecture
The Wilkins Lecture was a lecture organised by the Royal Society of London on the subject of the history of science and named after John Wilkins
John Wilkins, (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an Anglican clergyman, natural philo ...