Two of the three Founding Fathers of the Devonshire Association were elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society, the mark of outstanding scientific excellence in Britain. William Pengelly is widely recognised as a geologist and a pioneer of Palaeolithic archaeology, but Charles Spence Bate, the Association’s equally distinguished second President, is far less well known today.
He was in his time the foremost authority – possibly in the world – on Crustacea, the immense animal group that ranges from tiny planktonic copepods to giant crabs via shrimps, woodlice, and barnacles, on which latter he corresponded with Darwin, a specialist in the group. His mammoth report on 2,000 specimens from the Challenger expedition of 1873-6 took him ten years, and his two volume monograph, with the entomologist J. O. Westwood, on the British sessile-eyed Crustacea was the standard work for more than a century.
Bate, Charles Spence – The Devonshire Association (devonassoc.org.uk)
Wikipedia Charles Spence Bate, FRS (March 16, 1819 in Truro, Cornwall – July 29, 1889 in Devon) was a British zoologist and dentist.
He was born at Trenick House near Truro, the son of Charles Bate (1789–1872) and Harriet Spence (1788–1879). Charles adopted "Spence Bate" as his surname, perhaps to distinguish himself from his father, and used that name consistently in his publications; it was also used consistently by his contemporaries to refer to him.
He practiced dentistry first at Swansea, and then at Plymouth, taking over his father's practice. He was president of the Odontology Society.
He was an authority on the Crustacea, for which he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1861, and a frequent correspondent of Charles Darwin, mostly concerning their shared interest in barnacles. Together with John Obadiah Westwood, he wrote "A history of the British sessile-eyed Crustacea" in 1868. He wrote reports on the crustaceans collected during the HMS Challenger expedition of 1872–1876.
He died on 29 July 1889, at The Rock, South Brent, Devon and was buried in Plymouth cemetery.
