User:JMiall/Louis Compton Miall

Louis Compton Miall
photograph probably dating from around 1900
Born	12 Sep 1842
Died	21 Feb 1921
Cause of death	Stroke
Monuments	LC Miall building & Miall lecture theatre, Baines Wing both University of Leeds
Education	Silcoates School, Wakefield
Alma mater	Leeds School of Medicine
Occupation(s)	Biology and related fields
Employer	Yorkshire College of Science then University of Leeds (1876-1907)
Known for	First Professor of Biology at Leeds University; dissecting an elephant
Title	Professor of Biology, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy
Successor	Walter Garstang and Vernon Blackman
Spouse	Emily Pearce
Children	5
Relatives	Robert Pearce (brother-in-law) Harold Wager(son-in-law) Edward Miall (uncle) Leonard Miall (grandson) Henry Compton (uncle) Morell Mackenzie (cousin)

Louis Compton Miall FRS (12 Sep 1842-21 Feb 1921) was a Victorian polymath - early in his life he worked as a teacher, geologist, palaeontologist and museum curator and later a biologist, entomologist and educationalist. He is probably most famous as the first Professor of Biology at the University of Leeds and is well known there today for his dissection in 1874 of an elephant that had been part of a circus visiting Leeds.

Personal life

Louis Compton Miall was born Brunswick Place, Bradford West End. His father was James Goodeve Miall, a church minister who worked for over 40 years at chapels in Suffolk, Huntingdonshire and from 1837 onwards Salem Congregational Chapel in Bradford. His mother, Elizabeth Symonds Mackenzie, came from a family of medical practitioners and actors (see Henry Compton, Compton Mackenzie, Morell Mackenzie, Fay Compton etc.) The disestablishmentarian MP Edward Miall was his uncle.

Miall attended Silcoates School in Wakefield for a number of years before becoming a junior teacher, aged 15, at a school setup by his parents in Bradford. Following family troubles and religious doubts Miall moved to London to take an Assistant Master job teaching classics at a school in Stamford Hill, a subject he did not regard himself as knowing or being able to teach.

In 1870 he was married to Emily Pearce in Ipswich. Emily was a linguist and writer on education, and the sister of the future MP Robert Pearce. They had five children: Winifred who married Harold Wager, Stephen, longtime editor of Chemistry and Industry, Frances, Lawrence and Rowland, director of scientific instrument firm C. F. Casella. One of his many grandchildren was Leonard Miall.

Louis and Emily lived in Bradford but also owned a cottage in Buckden, Wharfedale where they used to spend the weekends. Due to their large number of highly achieving relations the family were listed in Noteworthy Families by eugenicists Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster. After retirement Louis and Emily spent 11 years living in Letchworth. After Emily's death Miall moved back to Yorkshire and lived for a while in Ben Rhydding Hydro. He died of a stroke on 21 Feb 1921.

Career

Early in his life Miall was a keen amateur naturalist, jointly writing Flora of the West Riding in 1862 and writing various papers and newspaper articles on geology and botany.

Despite having no formal training in the area he was invited by R.H. Meade to become secretary of the reforming Bradford Philosophical Society in 1864 at a salary of £100 per year. This job also entailed curating and expanding their museum, which by 1866 had moved to new premises. He later attended Leeds School of Medicine and by 1871 was secretary and curator of the museum of the Philosophical and Literary Society of Leeds.

In 1874 the body of a dead elephant from a travelling circus was bought using money provided by the Philosophical Society and it was dissected by Miall and Frederick Greenwood in a specially constructed shed in the quadrangle, initially over the winter but taking 3 years to finish. The work was published in 1878 in Anatomy of the Indian elephant.

His appointment as first lecturer and later Professor of Biology at the recently formed Yorkshire College of Science in 1876 fixed the development of the college towards the later broader 'university' direction rather than the more narrow trade school which some desired. Miall was not offered the new zoology chair at Owens College, Manchester in 1879 and in fact continued working at the college until its foundation as university in 1904, at which point he was granted an honorary doctorate, and then for a further 3 years. Miall was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1881 and in 1882-1884 also did some teaching at Firth College, Sheffield. In 1892 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. From 1904 to 1906 he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy Miall was head of the zoological and education sections of the British Association in 1897 and 1908 respectively.

When he retired in 1907 his department at Leeds University was split into separate Zoology and Botany departments headed by Walter Garstang and Vernon Blackman respectively.

ref for talking to Leeds Naturalist’s Field Club and Scientific Association [2] - ?combine this with scathing comments about amateurs later?

Pholiderpeton

Legacy

The LC Miall Building at the University of Leeds (left)

On Miall's death Nature published 3 separate memoirs.

Miall has two structures at the University of Leeds named after him:

1. The LC Miall Building, which houses the School of Biology. An 8 floor, 5,800 square metres (62,000 sq ft) floorspace building that cost £6.6m to build and was officially opened in 1997 by John Battle MP.
2. The Miall lecture theatre in Baines Wing of University of Leeds

Described by a grandson as a 'puritanical atheist ... one who while theologically an atheist never otherwise threw off his puritanical upbringing'

Louis Compton Miall by Frederic Yates

Following his death a resolution was passed at a general meeting of the members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain on March 7th 1921 stating:

Resolved, that the managers desire to place on record their sense of the loss which the Royal Institution and the Sciences of Biology and Natural History have sustained by the death of Louis Compton Miall, Doctor of Science, Fellow of the Royal Society, Emeritus Professor of Biology, University of Leeds.

Dr Miall was an original general investigator in Palaeontology and his studies on comparative anatomy, especially those on the skull of the Crocodile and on the Indian Elephant, are classic examples of his work. He held the office of Professor of Biology in the Yorkshire College of Science in 1876 and to his loyal and devoted services its eventual establishment as the University of Leeds is largely due. His sound judgment and business aptitudes were of inestimable value during the early years of its existence, and its success today has been determined to a great extent by his influence and personality. Dr Miall was elected in 1904 Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution, and delivered several courses of Day Lectures on his Biological Research and two Friday Evening Discourses on:

• The Surface Film of Water and the Life of Plants and Animals (1892)
• A Yorkshire Moor (1898)

On behalf of the Members the Managers desire to express their deepest sympathy with the Miall family in their bereavement.

— Royal Institution, General meeting

Notes

one of the approximately 12 professors from the Yorkshire College who formed the new Leeds University. Geologist, botanist, Excellent teacher, admirable lecturer 1st lecturer, then professor His appointment fixed the development of the college towards the later broader university direction rather than the more narrow trade school which some desired.

Entomological Society of London despite the fact that he believed that students should learn from their own exeriments and observations and not from listening to lectures he was described as 'an ideal lecturer, clear, confident and methodical'. very much in favour of lab-based learning and frequently critical of lecturing with no illustration or props he believed that lecturing often 'inevitably produced an unpleasant dogmatic manner' (30 yrs of teaching) after lectures 'The practice of regularly inspecting the students' notebooks led me to the discovery that the notes were often worthless' 'It is my business, for example, to study details which, to most people, would seem stupid and dry in the highest degree. I occupy myself with the variations in shape of the mandibles and maxillae and antennae of insects. I delight in working out new details of legs and wings. Why do I care about variations in form which to another seem totally unimportant! Years ago I was led to see that attention to these details would help me to solve questions in which Darwin and Huxley and other men who had the true gifts of a teacher, had given me an enduring interest. It is no drudgery to me to work out minute details so long as the inspiration of my masters continues in full force.'

'If you are not yourself an inquirer, you cannot teach the children to inquire. Science lessons without inquiry, without wonder and unfeigned longing to know something more, are dead and stupefying. Do you work at science in the holidays? Do you make experiments on your own account, merely to gratify your own curiosity? If not, you will never make a really good teacher of science, the root of the matter is not in you.'

described in Nature as being as 'happily free from the laboratory and its technicalities and methods' as Gilbert White

'Titus Salt’s son then endowed the biology chair, giving £150 per year on the condition that Miall was the first Professor' -

active member of Leeds Naturalists’ Club (president 1887-1888)

'Miall attempted, once in position at the YC, to establish a number of imbricated privileges for other biologists in Yorkshire, namely: status, positions, security, opportunities for advancement, and career structures' 'Miall considered himself primarily an educator' 'He was highly critical of local museums for their parochial collections, their lack of adequate labeling, and the biases that resulted from cabinets donated by local collectors. He complained that “our notions as to adequate provision for [such museums] are at present distinctly narrow.” As far as the public exhibitions were concerned, in 1904 he still felt that “Few of our public museums are effective for the purpose of popular instruction,” for “the nearer [museums] approach to scientific completeness, the less fitted will they become for popular instruction.” ' continues... 'Miall’s professionalizing efforts led him to be highly critical of field club practice' 'I have belonged to many natural history clubs but have found hardly any of them profitable' 'long and dry, wretchedly delivered papers . . . form the staple of the average literary or scientific society'

Bibliography

Miall wrote 23 books, some in collaboration with other authors. A partial bibliography is given below:

• The Flora of the West Riding - 1862 (Carrington and Miall)
• Coal; its history and uses - 1878 [3]
• Anatomy of the Indian elephant - 1878 [4]
• The Skull of the Crocodile; A Manual for Students - 1878 [5]
• The Geology, Natural History and Prehistoric Antiquities of Craven in Yorkshire - 1878 (in A. W. Morant (ed.) History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, 3rd edn. Dodgson: Leeds)
• The structure and life-history of the cockroach (Periplaneta orientalis); an introduction to the study of insects - 1886 [6]
• Thirty years of teaching - 1897 [7]
• Object Lessons from Nature - 1890, Cassell: London
• Round the year; a series of short nature-studies - 1898 [8]
• The structure and life-history of the harlequin fly (Chironomus) - 1900 [9]
• Editor of the 1901 edition of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
• Injurious and Useful Insects: An Introduction to the Study of Economic Entomology - 1902 [10]
• House, garden and field, a collection of short nature studies - 1904 [11]
• The sirenoid ganoids: with a description of the British fossil teeth of Ceratodus - 1878
• History of biology - 1911 [12]
• The early naturalists; their lives and work (1530-1789) - 1912 [13]
• The natural history of aquatic insects - 1922 [14]
• Description of the Remains of Megalichthys in the Leeds City Museum

External links

• Works by JMiall/Louis Compton Miall at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Category:Academics of the University of Leeds