Reginald Innes Pocock

Reginald Innes Pocock F.R.S. (4 March 1863 - 9 August 1947) was a British zoologist.

Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St. Edward's School, Oxford. He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed to explore comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum. He studied biology and geology at University College, Bristol under Conwy Lloyd Morgan and William Johnson Sollas. In 1885 he became an assistant at the Natural History Museum, and worked in the section of Entomology for a year. He was put in charge of the collections of Arachnida and Myriapoda. He was also tasked with arranging the British birds collections, in the course of which he developed a lasting interest in ornithology. The 200 papers he published in his eighteen years at the museum soon brought him recognition as an authority on Arachnida and Myriapoda.

In 1904 he left to become Superintendent of London Zoo, remaining so until his retirement in 1923. He then worked, as a voluntary researcher, in the British Museum, in the mammals department.

He described the Leopon in a 1912 letter to The Field, based on examination of a skin sent to him by W. S. Millard, the Secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society.

Partial bibliography

• Reginald I. Pocock (1902) Arachnida. Scorpiones, Pedipalpi, and Solifugae
• Reginald Innes Pocock (1902) Biologia Centrali-Americana. Arachnida.
• Reginald Innes Pocock (1900) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma - the Arachnida volume.
• Reginald Innes Pocock (1939) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma - Mammalia Vol 1, Primates and Carnivora (in part).

References

• Ernst Schwarz (1948) Reginald Innes Pocock, F. R. S. Journal of Mammalogy 29(1):93