Cooper , Sir , Astley Paston , 1768-1841 , 1st Baronet , surgeon

Sir Astley Paston Cooper was born in Brooke Hall, Norfolk, in 1768. He was educated at home. He was articled to his uncle, William Cooper, senior surgeon at Guy's Hospital in London, in 1784. He lived in the house of Henry Cline, surgeon at nearby St Thomas's Hospital, whom he became apprenticed to instead. He became Cline's anatomy demonstrator in 1789, and he shared the lectures on anatomy and surgery with Cline, in 1791. He attended lectures by Desault and Chopart in Paris, in 1792. Cooper taught at St Thomas's and worked in dissections and lectured in anatomy and surgery, during the 1790s. A compilation of notes based on his lectures was published in 1820 titled Outlines of Lectures on Surgery, which went through many editions. From 1793 until 1796 Cooper was also lecturer in anatomy at the Company of Surgeons (after 1800 the Royal College of Surgeons). In 1800 his uncle, William Cooper, resigned as surgeon to Guy's Hospital and Cooper was elected to the post. He was elected professor of comparative anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1813-1815. He became a member of the court of examiners of the college in 1822, and he served as president twice, in 1827 and 1836. He was also a vice-president of the Royal Society, to whose fellowship he had been elected in 1802, and won the society's Copley medal. He was a member of the Physical Society at Guy's. the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and the Pow-Wow, a medical dining club started by John Hunter. He was created a baronet in 1821. He died in 1840.