User:JMiall/Louis Compton Miall

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 - ?combine this with scathing comments about amateurs later?

Pholiderpeton

Legacy
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, 5800 sqm 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' 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: On behalf of the Members the Managers desire to express their deepest sympathy with the Miall family in their bereavement."
 * The Surface Film of Water and the Life of Plants and Animals (1892)
 * A Yorkshire Moor (1898)

- Royal Institution