Leonard James Spencer, 1870-1959

Abstract

Leonard James Spencer, formerly Keeper of Minerals at the British Museum (Natural History) from 1927 to 1935, died in London on 14 April 1959, at the advanced age of 88. He was fourth in a line of distinguished Keepers of Minerals in the British Museum, his predecessors being Story-Maskelyne, appointed first Keeper in 1857, Sir Lazarus Fletcher and G. T. Prior. All three were Fellows of the Royal Society to which Spencer was elected in 1925. He was born at Worcester on 7 July 1870, the eldest of eight children of James Spencer, schoolmaster, and Elizabeth Bonser, and was educated at Bradford Technical College (1883-1886) where his father was for many years headmaster of the day-school department. With a Royal Exhibition Spencer proceeded to the Royal College of Science for Ireland in Dublin (1886-1889) where he gained first-class honours in chemistry in 1889. Later he entered Cambridge University as a scholar of Sidney Sussex College. Here he studied geology, mineralogy and chemistry, gaining a first class in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos and was awarded the Harkness Scholarship for Geology (1893). Funds were very short for Spencer at College and he lived quietly and kept very much to himself. Already at Cambridge he was abstracting papers for H.M. Patent Office (Abridgments of specifications of Philosophical Instruments for the period 1855-1892), and so embarked, perhaps from necessity, on a work that was later to become a labour of love. It was fortunate for mineralogy that just at the end of his Cambridge course there happened to be one of the infrequent vacancies in the scientific staff of the Mineral Department of the British Museum, and for this post Spencer was the successful candidate.