Thomas Lane Bancroft was born at Lenton, Nottinghamshire,
in the United Kingdom in 1860. In 1864 the family emigrated to Brisbane
after Bancroft's father,
Joseph (a doctor), was advised for health reasons to settle in
a warmer climate.
Bancroft was educated at the Normal School and
Brisbane Grammar School, and as a boy assisted with his father's
experiments and cultivated a life-long interest in scientific enquiry.
In 1878, Bancroft entered Edinburgh
University and graduated MB ChM in 1883, with a bronze medal for
botany. Following this, he spent a year at the Manchester Infirmary,
and became an excellent photographer.
After his return to Australia, Bancroft worked from
1885 ñ 86 at Geraldton (Innisfail), where he discovered new poisonous
plants in the rainforest. At this point, Bancroft decided to embark
on pharmacological studies of plants, and during the period 1886 to
1894 he tasted over 1,000 plants, tested more than 150 extracts and
published a number of papers, including the first record of bacteria
in the root-nodules of legumes in 1893. During these years, Bancroft
also practised as a physician, first at Christchurch Hospital in New
Zealand, and then in practice with his father and cousin in Brisbane.
Bancroft inherited his father's experimental farm and
pemmican factory at Deception Bay, and moved there in 1894. Here he
was to carry out his most important work in tropical medicine: the
study of mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases. In one of his early
studies, Bancroft discovered that female mosquitoes, thought to be
short-lived and dependent on blood meals, could actually survive for
weeks on banana.
Bancroft's father, Joseph, had discovered the worm responsible
for filariasis,
named Filaria bancrofti in his honour. During 1899, Thomas
Bancroft furthered his father's discovery by defining and illustrating
each stage of the larval worm over a development period of 16 days.
In 1904, Bancroft investigated heart-worm in dogs, and proved that
the infective larvae emerged from the tip of the mosquito's proboscis.
From 1905 to 1906, Bancroft held temporary appointments from the State
Health Department to investigate dengue fever, beriberi and suspected
cases of plague. At that time,
dengue fever was thought to be transmitted by the Culex fatigans
mosquito. Bancroft, however, suspected that the carrier was the Aedes
aegypti mosquito, which was active during the day, and he was
subsequently proved correct.
In 1908, Bancroft published a review of Queensland's
mosquitoes. That same year, he was appointed government medical officer
at Stannary Hills, a mining settlement west of Cairns. By 1910, Bancroft
was posted to Eidsvold on the Burnett River, where he investigated
the Queensland lung fish, which he believed were nearly extinct. Bancroft
discovered that the lung fish hatchlings became temporarily amphibious;
this discovery enabled him to raise the hatchlings through the difficult
early stage of life.
Bancroft's scientific interests covered a broad field,
and he undertook many investigations ranging from studies of parasites
of birds, to Aboriginal food plants and the hybridization of cotton.
From 1884 to 1932 he collected plants for the
Queensland Herbarium and animals for the
Queensland Museum, and in 1923 he was elected a corresponding
member of the Zoological Society of London.
When Thomas Bancroft died in 1933, he had published
84 research papers, but his ambition to hold a full-time research
appointment was never fulfilled. Despite this, he left a considerable
legacy to science ñ one far greater than his actual personal research.
It was Bancroft's generosity in providing free access to materials
for colleagues that led to the identification of many new species
among such diverse groups as freshwater algae, eucalypts, fish, fruit-flies,
snakes, mosquitoes and spiders. Today, his name lives on in many of
these species; a fitting recognition of the scientific contributions
of this shy, kindly man who shunned publicity.
Bancroft also left a scientific legacy in the form of
his daughter,
Josephine Mackerras, who was to become a noted entomologist and
parasitologist, and who, with her husband Ian,
continued the Bancroft tradition of scientific research.
Reference: Australian Dictionary of Biography
entry (E.N. Marks), Vol. 7 pp164-165
See also: Queensland
Institute of Medical Research
