William Elford Leach (2 February 1791 – 25 August 1836) was an English zoologist and marine biologist.
Life and work
thumb|[[Libinia emarginata described by Leach in Zoological Miscellany in 1815.]]
Elford Leach was born at Hoe Gate, Plymouth, the son of an attorney. At the age of twelve he began a medical apprenticeship at the Devonshire and Exeter Hospital, studying anatomy and chemistry.
From 1813 Leach concentrated on his zoological interests and was employed as an 'Assistant Librarian' (what would later be called Assistant Keeper and was the naturalist who separated the centipedes and millipedes from the insects, giving them their own group, the Myriapoda. In his day he was the world's leading expert on the Crustacea and was in contact with scientists in the United States and throughout Europe. In 1816 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 25.
Death
In 1821, he suffered a nervous breakdown due to overwork and became unable to continue his researches. He resigned from the British Museum in March 1822 and his elder sister Jane took him to continental Europe to convalesce. They lived in Italy and (briefly) Malta and he died from cholera in San Sebastiano Curone, near Tortona, north of Genoa, on 25 August 1836.
Two years later, the year of Leach's death, the House of Commons completed a detailed investigation of the management of the British Museum. During their interviews the MPs had received confirmation from John Edward Gray that it was Leach who, "was the first to make the English acquainted, by his works and by his improved manner of arranging the collections of the Museum, with the progress that had been made in natural science on the Continent. Thus a new impetus was given to zoology". Edward Griffiths (translator of George Cuvier's Le Règne Animal) told the inquiry that in Britain, before Leach's work, "zoology was utterly neglected; 20 years ago it was anything but popular; certainly there were very few amateurs that paid much attention to it." "In your judgment," the committee proposed, "Dr Leach has the eminent credit of having raised the science of zoology in England?" "Indeed I think so" replied Griffiths.
In his short career Leach had brought British zoology back to the cutting edge of the subject and as a consequence had put the next generation of British zoologists on much firmer ground. The next generation of British zoologists contained both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Despite his impact, today Elford Leach is remembered mainly in the scientific names of the many species that honour him. In the years up to 1850 alone 137 new species were named leachii, leachiana, leachella, elfordii, elfordiana and other variants.
Leach is commemorated in the scientific names of two species of lizards, Anolis leachii and Rhacodactylus leachianus.
In the non-scientific literature he is honoured in the common names of several species. Leach's storm-petrel was named after him by Coenraad Jacob Temminck in 1820