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Carl Frederick Abel Pantin

1899-1967. Professor of Zoology.

Fascinated by natural history since early childhood, Pantin studied at Tonbridge School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.  He then spent seven years working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Plymouth, where he began his studies of the lower orders of invertebrates.  His work on amoeboid movement contained the elements of the later biophysical approach to the structure of cytoplasm; he investigated the effect of ions on and in tissues and made similarly fundamental discoveries about osmoregulation in flatworms. Pantin believed that physiological mechanism is only meaningful when understood in the context of the biology of the animal in nature; he was one of the first zoologists to employ an ecological, rather than morphological, approach. To this end he would call on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the animal kingdom, backed by a sound knowledge of palaeontology and geology.

He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1929 where he lectured and directed studies for the following thirty-five years, while continuing his own research and publications.  His most influential work was a series of papers, published in 1933, on the functioning of the nervous system of the sea anemone.

He became reader in invertebrate zoology in 1937 and succeeded Sir James Gray as professor two years later. Despite his failing health, as head of the zoology department Pantin succeeded in obtaining new buildings for the Museum of Zoology, and a modern research wing which today bears his name.  Pantin was president of the Linnean Society of London from 1958 to 1960, president of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (1960-66), and from 1963 until his death, chairman of the board of trustees of the Natural History Museum. He received the royal medal of the Royal Society, and the gold medal of the Linnean Society. He became an honorary member of the Royal Society of New Zealand and was given honorary doctorates of the universities of São Paulo and Durham. He also became an honorary fellow of Christ's College.