Ernest Hanbury Hankin

Ernest Hanbury Hankin

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Ernest Hanbury Hankin

Ernest Hanbury Hankin (February 4, 1865- March 29, 1939), was a British bacteriologist, aeronautical theorist and naturalist. Working mainly in India, he studied malaria, cholera and other diseases. His studies of geometric patterns in Saracenic art has influenced computer scientists in recent years. He was educated at University College London and St. Bartholomew?s Hospital Medical School. He was an Associate Fellow of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain.

Illustration from "On the flight of Pterodactyls" by E. H. Hankin and D. M. S. Watson (1914)

In 1892 he accepted the position of Chemical Examiner and Bacteriologist to the Government of the United Provinces and of the Central Provinces of India. In 1896 he published, through the Pasteur Institute, "L'action bactericide des eaux de la Jumna et du Gange sur le vibrion du cholera"^[1], a paper in which he described the antibacterial activity of an as then unknown source in the Ganges and Jumna Rivers in India. He suggested it was responsible for limiting the spread of cholera. While Hankin did not study this phenomenon further, his work was nonetheless recognized a generation later as being among of the first observations of bacteriophage activity when Félix d'Herelle witnessed it at the Pasteur Institute.^[2] Hankin wrote "On the Epidemiology of Plague" in the Journal of Hygiene in 1905, but by now his interests had drifted towards the subject of flight.

In 1914 he published Animal Flight about soaring flight in birds, based on observations he made, particularly of gulls and vultures, in Agra.^[3] With D. M. S. Watson he also published a pioneering paper on the flight of Pterodactyls in the Aeronautical Journal (1914).^[4]

Hankin studied the decorations of Itmad-Ud-Daulah which he discussed in his work "The Drawing of Geometric Patterns in Saracenic Art".

His research continued back in England. In 1923, Time magazine carried the following short notice on his exploits: "Much interest is taken in England in the problems of air gliding. People on a London Common saw a strange sight?an elderly gentleman playing with a toy aeroplane. He was Dr. E. H. Hankin ... and he was experimenting with a model glider."^[5]

While in India, he wrote about Islamic star patterns he had observed there, but publication was delayed until 1925. "The Drawing of Geometric Patterns in Saracenic Art" was finally published in Memoirs of the Archaeological Societry of India, under the editorship of J. F. Blakiston.^[6] This and later writings have influenced computer scientists in recent years.^[7]^[8]