Percy Sladen

Walter Percy Sladen (1849–1900) was an English biologist who specialised in starfish. The son of a wealthy leather merchant, Sladen was born near Halifax, Yorkshire on 30 June 1849. He was educated at Hipperholme Grammar School and Marlborough College, but received no university training. As a young man he indulged his hobby of natural history, but soon become fascinated with echinoderms. In 1876 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of ... more

Walter Percy Sladen (1849–1900) was an English biologist who specialised in starfish. The son of a wealthy leather merchant, Sladen was born near Halifax, Yorkshire on 30 June 1849. He was educated at Hipperholme Grammar School and Marlborough College, but received no university training. As a young man he indulged his hobby of natural history, but soon become fascinated with echinoderms. In 1876 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and the following year became a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. 1877 also saw the publication of his first paper, in which he split the sea-lily genus Poteriocrinus into four; in his lifetime, Sladen would gain a reputation as a "splitter" because of his proclivity for declaring specimens to belong to new genera or species. Late that year he began a long and fruitful collaboration with Duncan; which would see the publication of some 15 co-authored papers, many on fossils, over the course of twelve years. From December 1878,... less