Robert Edmond Grant, M.D., F.R.S.

Abstract

ON Sunday, August 23, after an illness of about a fortnight, died Dr. R. E. Grant, for many years Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College, London. The family from which Dr. Grant was descended had its head-quarters in the county of Elgin, whence his father removed to Edinburgh, settling as an accountant and a writer to the signet in Argyll Square. He was one of fourteen children, twelve brothers and two sisters, being the seventh son, and the longest surviving of them all. Neither he nor any of his brothers were married; one sister was, but she left no children. He was born in 1793. Between 1803 and 1808 he was a pupil at the High School, Edinburgh, after leaving which he entered the University of that city as a medical student, attending the lectures of Drs. Monro, Hope, Gregory, Duncan, and others. He took his doctor's degree in 1814, for five years after which he devoted his time to travelling on the Continent, visiting Paris, Rome, Florence, as well as Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria. In 1822 he settled in Edinburgh, and from then till 1828 contributed several zoological papers to different Scotch scientific societies and journals, including one to the Wernerian Natural History Society, in 1827, on the circulation of fluids through the structure of sponges, in which attention was first drawn to the function of the ossicula and pores of those animals, and which led Mr. Fleming to give the generic name Grantia to one member of the family.