14 



ISAAC COOKE THOMPSON, F.L.S. 



By W. E. HOYLE, D.Sc. 



(Read before the Society, November ii, 1903). 



The Society, in common with the scientific world at large, has to 

 deplore a serious loss in the person of Mr. Isaac C. Thompson, of 

 Liverpool, who was suddenly struck down by apoplexy in full vigour 

 only five days ago. He was born at Birkenhead, in 1843, and 

 descended from a family well and honourably known in the Society 

 of Friends. His mother was one of the ministers of that body, and 

 both for her character and discourses much valued by the Liverpool 

 meeting. He inherited his scientific tastes from his father, who was 

 a member of the old-established firm of Thompson and Capper, 

 pharmaceutical chemists, and was fond of assembling a number of 

 congenial friends around him to spend the evening in studying speci- 

 mens with the microscope. If report speaks truly these gatherings 

 had a well-developed social as well as a scientific side. 



Isaac Thompson was educated at Kendal, and subsequently at 

 York, and then, on leaving school at the age of fifteen, was sent into 

 his father's place of business. At this time his chief scientific interest 

 was in botany; he was passionately fond of flowers, and so successful 

 as a collector that he won a prize offered by the Liverpool Royal 

 Infirmary for the best series obtained in the neighbourhood of that 

 city. It is recorded in the family annals that being sent one day on 

 a message to Lord Derby's house, he picked on the way all the 

 flowers not previously known to him, mostly what would be termed 

 weeds. Not wishing to appear at the door with these treasures in his 

 hands, he concealed them until his return. His surprise may be 

 imagined when two ladies of Lord Derby's family called at the shop 

 next day with a choice bouquet for " the young man who was so fond 

 of flowers." Eventually he became a partner in the business, and on 

 his father's death, at the age of fifty-seven, took a very active share in 

 the management of the firm. 



Turning to Thompson's scientific work, that for which he will best 

 be known by posterity will be his long series of papers on the smaller 

 Crustacea, beginning in 1886 with a "Report on the Copepoda of 

 Liverpool Bay," and proceeding steadily and with increasing import- 

 ance and culminating in a long report on the Copepoda collected by 

 Professor Herdman in Ceylon — a monumental work occupying eighty 

 pages, and illustrated by twenty plates, undertaken in collaboration 

 with Mr, Andrew Scott, and, by a curious coincidence, sent to press 

 on the very day of his death. 



