Cooper , William White , 1816-1886 , surgeon and oculist

William White Cooper was born in Holt, Wiltshire, in 1816. He studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1834, and became a private pupil of surgeon Edward Stanley. Cooper took notes of Sir Richard Owen's lectures on comparative anatomy given at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1838-1839. Owen was impressed and awarded Cooper a prize. The notes were later published as Lectures in the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Invertebrate Animals (1843). Cooper received the MRCS in 1838, and the FRCS in 1845. He was one of the original staff of the North London Eye Institution. Subsequently he became Ophthalmic Surgeon to St Mary's Hospital Paddington. He was appointed Surgeon-Oculist in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1859. He died in 1886, before his imminent knighthood.