Abstract
Sir Clive Forster-Cooper will retire from the post of director of the British Museum (Natural History) on September 30, after ten arduous years of office, and a much longer period spent in the service of museums and libraries. His active interest in museum problems goes back to the days when, as a young man, he studied in the American Museum of Natural History under the late Prof. H. F. Osborn; but he was not connected with a museum in an official capacity until some years later. In 1914 he became superintendent of the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, and immediately began a much-needed reorganisation. By dint of drastic pruning and rearrangement, he transformed an old-fashioned teaching collection into a modern museum well adapted to the changed conditions after the First World War. During this period, Mr. Forster-Cooper was elected a syndic of the FitzWilliam Museum, and also to the University Building Syndicate of which he ultimately became chairman. The scheme for a new university library had its origin in a suggestion which he made soon after his election to the latter body.
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The British Museum (Natural History): Sir Clive Forster-Cooper, F.R.S. Nature 160, 252 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160252b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160252b0