John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

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John Lubbock.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, PC (April 30, 1834 – May 28, 1913), English banker, politician, naturalist and archaeologist was born the son of Sir John William Lubbock, Bart.

Lubbock was educated at Eton College from 1845 and afterwards was taken into his father's bank (which later amalgamated with Coutts & Co), where he became a partner at the age of twenty-two. In 1865 he succeeded to the baronetcy.

In 1870, and again in 1874, he was elected a Member of Parliament for Maidstone. He lost the seat at the election of 1880; but was at once elected member for the University of London, of which he had been vice-chancellor since 1872. He carried numerous enactments in parliament, including the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 and the Ancient Monuments Act of 1882.

Lubbock was elected the first president of the Institute of Bankers in 1879; in 1881 he was president of the British Association, and from 1881 to 1886 president of the Linnean Society of London. In January 1884 he founded the Proportional Representation Society, later to become the Electoral Reform Society.

Caricature from Punch, 1882

In 1865 Lubbock published what was probably the most influential archaeological text book of the 19th Century, Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, and was responsible for inventing the names Palaeolithic and Neolithic to denote the Old and New Stone Ages respectively. He carried out extensive correspondence with Charles Darwin, who was his neighbor in Downe except for a brief period 1861-1865, when Lubbock moved to Chislehurst. He helped engineer Darwin's burial in Westminster Abbey following the latter's death in 1882.

Lubbock received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge (where he was Rede lecturer in 1886), Edinburgh, Dublin, and Wurzburg; and in 1878 was appointed a trustee of the British Museum. From 1888 to 1892 he was president of the London Chamber of Commerce; from 1889 to 1890 vice-chairman and from 1890 to 1892 chairman of the London County Council.

In 1890 he was appointed a privy councillor; and was chairman of the committee of design on the new coinage in 1891. In January 1900 he was raised to the peerage, under the title of Baron Avebury.

[edit] References

Hutchinson, H.G., 1914, Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury. London.
Grant Duff, U., 1924, The life-work of Lord Avebury. London: Watts & Co.
Sir John.Lubbock in The Columbia Encyclopedia (Sixth Edition, 2001)
Lubbock, J., 1865, Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. London: Williams and Norgate.
Trigger, B.G., 1989, A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] External links

Academic Offices
Preceded by Andrew Carnegie of Skibo	Rector of the University of St Andrews 1907–1910	Succeeded by The Earl of Rosebery
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Lubbock	Baronet (of Lammas) 1865–1913	Succeeded by John Lubbock
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by (new creation)	Baron Avebury 1900–1913	Succeeded by John Lubbock