Lancelot Alexander Borradaile

Borradaile may be best known for his undergraduate textbook titled Manual of Elementary Zoology,[1] and for The Invertebrata: a manual for the use of students, co-written with F. A. Potts.[2]

As well as these generalist works, Borradaile also worked as a carcinologist. He published an important monograph On the Pontoniinae in 1917, based on material collected by the 1905 Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Indian Ocean, led by John Stanley Gardiner.[3] He worked extensively on crabs and similar animals, and coined the term "carcinisation" to describe "one of the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab".[4] He is commemorated in the scientific names Metapenaeopsis borradaili, Athanas borradailei, Corallianassa borradailei, Accalathura borradailei and Petrolisthes borradailei.[2]

He was born on 26 September 1872[5] to a "merchant in the African trade".[1] He studied at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, on the natural sciences tripos.[1] He graduated with a first-class honours B.A. in 1893;[1] the M.A. followed in 1897.[5] In 1895, he began demonstrating in zoology at Cambridge, and also starting investigating variation in crustaceans, under William Bateson.[1] In 1899, he accompanied John Stanley Gardiner on an expedition to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Minikoi (Minicoy),[1] where he studied various aspects of crustacean biology, especially the terrestrial crabs. For his further work on crabs and shrimp, he was awarded the higher doctorate Sc.D. in 1922.[1]

Borradaile became university lecturer in zoology in 1910, later dean of Selwyn College and eventually tutor at that college.[1] He was and on the livery of the Drapers' Company and so a freeman of the City of London.[1] He retired in 1937[5] and died on 20 October 1945.[1][5]

• Works by L. A. Borradaile at the Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Photograph of L. A. Borradaile in 1926 in the National Portrait Gallery