Bertram Windle


Sir Bertram Coghill Alan Windle, was a British anatomist, administrator, archaeologist, scientist, educationalist and writer.

Biography

He was born at Mayfield Vicarage, in Staffordshire, where his father, the Reverend Samuel Allen Windle, a Church of England clergyman, was vicar. He attended Trinity College, where he graduated B.A. in 1879. He also served as Librarian of the University Philosophical Society in the 1877–78 session.
In 1891 he was appointed dean of the medical faculty of Queen's College, Birmingham. Queen's College's medical faculty became the medical faculty of Mason Science College in the early 1890s, and then became the medical faculty of the University of Birmingham in 1900. Windle was professor of anatomy and anthropology and first Dean of the Medical Faculty at Birmingham University. He was a member of the Teachers′ Registration Council until he resigned in late 1902. In 1904 he accepted the presidency of Queen's College, Cork. He acted as president of the university until 1918, when he moved to Canada.
During his medical training days, Windle was an atheist. He later converted to Catholicism. He was a critic of Darwinism and took influence from St. George Jackson Mivart. Historian David N. Livingstone has noted that Windle favoured a Catholic version of neo-Lamarckism.
Windle was a vitalist. Historian Peter J. Bowler has written that Windle was "one of the few biologists to defend an outright vitalism."

Family

Windle married twice, first in 1886 to Madoline Hudson, and in 1901 to Edith Mary Nazer. He died in 1929 aged 71.

Honours

Windle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1899. In 1909, he was made a knight of St. Gregory the Great by Pius X. In 1912, he was made a Knight Bachelor and therefore granted the title sir. He was knighted by King George V during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 6 March 1912.

Works

Selected articles
Miscellany