John Stanley Gardiner FRS[1] (24 January 1872 - 28 February 1946) was a British zoologist and oceanographer.
He was born in Belfast in 1872. His research career began in 1896 when he took part in the Royal Society's expedition to Funafuti atoll in the South Pacific ; from then onwards he was recognized as an authority on the distribution of marine animals in general and on the madreporarian corals in particular.
He was a pioneer in the scientific stuudy of coral reefs, conducting a classical study of reefs in the Indian Ocean, with three expeditions there in 1899-1900, 1905 and 1908. He used these expeditions as experience in the preparation of the 1928-1929 Great Barrier Reef Expedition organized at the request of the Governor General of Queensland by a specially formed Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
He was Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Cambridge from 1909-1937. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1908[1], and won its Darwin Medal in 1944. He delivered the Lowell Lectures at Harvard in 1930 and won the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London in 1936.
The above entry deals with John Stanley Gardiner's professional life. He was my Great Uncle and I (Derek John Gardiner) would like to add information about his personal life. November 28th 2011.
Stanley, as he was known, was the younger son of John Jephson Gardiner and Sarah McTier. He was born in Jordanstown (Belfast) in 1872 - two years after his brother Arthur. Jephson was a member of the Anglican clergy and, at the time of his marriage to Sarah in 1868, was chaplain to Lord Dufferin at Carrickfergus (near Belfast).
Stanley's mother died five months after he was born and in 1874, he and Arthur were taken by their father to England. They initially lived in Marshfield, Wiltshire, with Jephson having the position of Curate there. In 1876, Jephson and his two sons moved to Wonersh, near Guildford, Surrey. There Arthur and Stanley were pupils at a boarding school at 108 High Street, Guildford.[1]
Stanley attended Marlborough College from January 1885 until July 1890. While there "his critical thinking was shaped by the science masters and where he was a great supporter of the school's Natural History Society". [2]
Stanley won an exhibition to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and became a member of the college in 1891. He studied zoology and graduated in 1894 with a first class degree in Natural Sciences. He played hockey for Cambridge in 1894.
The period from 1896 to 1909 was spent by Stanley in doing field work in coral research. He spend considerable time in remote locations in the Indian Ocean as a member of three expeditions. This lasted until 1909 when Stanley was appointed Professor of Zoology at Cambridge and he held this position until 1935 when he was appointed Emeritus Professor.[3]
Stanley married Rachel Florence Denning on September 12th in 1900. They were married at All Souls' Church in Marylebone, London. Sadly, Rachel died in March 1901 from a miscarriage ("abortus" on her death certificate).
Stanley remarried in 1909. His wife was Edith Gertrude Willcock. She attended Newnham College, Cambridge from 1900 to 1904 and received a doctoral degree from the University of Dublin. (Apparently at the time, women could not receive doctoral degrees in England).
Edith was a chemist and did some pioneering research work with radium - although, typical of that time, her male colleagues received the credit.
Edith and Stanley had two daughters - Nancy Emma Gardiner born in 1911 and Joyce Critchley Gardiner born in 1913. Their daughter Nancy died young at the age of 45. She was married but had no children. Joyce, an accomplished painter, married and had three children.
Stanley and Edith lived at Bredon House, Cambridge. In 1965, this became the administrative offices for the newly founded Wolfson College. Stanley died in 1946 and Edith followed him in 1953.
This is a list of Professor Gardiner's publications:
Gardiner, J. S., (1898)‘On the perforate corals collected by the author in the South Pacific’, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 257–276 .
Gardiner, J. S., (1898), ‘The coral reefs of Funafuti, Rotuma and Fiji together with some notes on the structure and formation of coral reefs in general’, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 9, 417–503
Gardiner, J. S., (1903-1906) The fauna and geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes, being the account of the work carried on and of collections made by an expedition during the years 1899 and 1900 (2 volumes), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Gardiner, J. S., (1901), ‘On the rate of growth of some corals from Fiji’, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 11, 214–219 .
Gardiner, J. S., (1906), ‘The Indian Ocean’, Geog. J. 28, 313–332.
Gardiner, J. S., (1907–36), ‘Reports of the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Indian Ocean in 1905’, Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. (2) 12–19 .
Gardiner, J. S., 1931) Coral reefs and atolls, Macmillan, London, UK.
Gardiner, J. S., (1931), ‘Photosynthesis and solution in formation of coral reefs’, Nature 127, 857–858 .
Gardiner, J. S., (1936) ‘The reefs of the western Indian Ocean. I. Chagos Archipelago. II. The Mascarene Region’, Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. (2) 19, 393–436 .