John Thomas Quekett

John Thomas Quekett

John Thomas Quekett (born August 11, 1815 in Langport , Somerset , † August 20, 1861 in Pangbourne , Berkshire ) was a British histologist and practitioner of microscopy . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " JTQuekett "

Life

Quekett was the son of a principal and was an apprentice to a surgeon in Langport and to his brother Edwin before studying at King's College London and London Hospital Medical School. In 1840 he graduated from the Society of Apothecaries of London as a doctor and won a three-year scholarship in anatomy from the Royal College of Surgeons of England . As a schoolboy he was an avid microscopist who built his own microscope, and later continued this professionally by building up a large collection of histological specimens (not only from humans, but also from plants and animals) that the Royal College of Surgeons bought in 1846 and whose catalog Quekett published. In 1843 he became assistant curator at the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian MuseumRichard Owen , 1844 demonstrator of anatomy and 1852 professor of histology at the Royal College of Surgeons. When Richard Owen moved to Richmond, he took over the role of Chief Curator at the Hunterian Museum and in 1856 he officially succeeded him. At that time, however, his health was already deteriorating and he died in Pangbourne in 1861, where he was relaxing.

His book on microscopy contributed greatly to its dissemination among amateur scientists, and in his honor an association of amateur microscopists in London in 1865 named the Quekett Microscopical Club . The initiator was the botanist Mordecai Cooke and its first president was Edwin Lankester . The club still exists today and publishes the Quekett Journal of Microscopy.

In 1860 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , in 1857 a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and from 1841 to 1860 (when he became President), he was Secretary of the Royal Microscopical Society, founded in 1839 .

He had been married since 1846 and had four children. His brothers were the medic and botanist Edwin John Quekett (1808-1847) and the clergyman William Quekett (1802-1888), rector of Warrington .

Fonts

• Practical treatise on the use of the microscope, 1848, 3rd edition 1855
• Descriptive and Illustrated Catalog of the Histological Series ... in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Volume 1: Elementary Tissues of Vegetables and Animals, 1850, Volume 2: Structure of the Skeleton of Vertebrate Animals, 1855.
• Lectures on Histology, 2 volumes, 1852, 1854
• with John Morris: Catalog of the Fossil Organic Remains of Plants in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons 1859
• Catalog of Plants and Invertebrates 1860
• Intimate Structure of Bones in the four great Classes, Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes, with Remarks on the Value of the Knowledge in determining minute Organic Remains, Microscopical Society's Transactions, Volume 2, 1846, pp. 46-58

Web links

Wikisource: John Thomas Quekett  - Sources and full texts (English)

, (George Simonds Boulger, Dictionary of National Biography )

References and comments

1. ^ Quekett Microscopical Club, History