William Clift

William Clift (born February 14, 1775 in Burcombe near Bodmin , Cornwall , † June 20, 1849 in London ) was a British naturalist and first curator of the Hunterian Museum in London.

Clift came from a poor background (his father died early), went to school in Bodmin and stood out for his talent for drawing. Patrons recommended him to the naturalist and physician John Hunter in London, whose assistant he became from 1792. After Hunter's death in 1793, he looked after his museum and his written estate on behalf of the heirs, and was so successful that the Royal College of Surgeons of England , which took over the museum in 1800, continued to employ him as curator.

He was valued by leading English scholars such as Benjamin Collins Brodie , Charles Lyell , Joseph Banks , William Hyde Wollaston and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1823 on the advice of Humphry Davy . He had gathered a great deal of knowledge in comparative anatomy that he generously made available to others. Both Gideon Mantell (in his treatise on the Iguanodon) and Georges Cuvier paid him their thanks. The drawings in Matthew Baillie's anatomy book (1799) and many drawings in the publications of the anatomist Everard Home come from him . Richard Owen was able to publish John Hunter's writings, the originals of which Everard Home had destroyed around 1800, thanks to copies made by Clift.

He was married since 1799 and had a son William Home Clift (1803-1833), who assisted him in the museum, and a daughter Caroline Amelia Clift, who in 1835 married Richard Owen .

literature

• William Prideaux Courtney, Dictionary of National Biography , Online