Researching Edward Cockayne

Cockayne was born in Sheffield to Edward Shepherd and Mary Florence and went to Charterhouse School and Balliol College, Oxford before joining St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. He worked at the Middlesex Hospital and at the hospital for children on Great Ormond Street from 1834. He was particularly interested in endocrinology, and rare, genetic diseases of children. In 1946 he recognized a disease that would be named after him, called Cockayne's syndrome. This is a rare multisystem disorder characterized by dwarfism, pigmentary retinopathy, impaired nervous system development, and facial abnormalities. This disease has since been divided into three subtypes:* Cockayne syndrome I, or Classic Cockayne Syndrome: in which facial and somatic abnormalities develop during childhood. Due to progressive neurological degeneration, death occurs in the second or third decade.* Cockayne syndrome II, or Severe Cockayne Syndrome: in which facial and somatic abnormalities are present at birth. Death usually results by the age of seven.* Cockayne syndrome III: milder than Cockayne I & II, and its onset happens later than the other two types.

In 1933 he published the "Inherited Abnormalities of the Skin and its Appendages". This was the first book that dealt exclusively with genodermatoses (inherited skin disorders).

Besides his medical work, Cockayne was an entomologist and spent more time on it after his retirement in 1945, living at the Oasis in Tring. He amassed a large collection of butterflies and moths, which in 1947 was donated to the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum at Tring, Hertfordshire. The collection which included those of Bernard Kettlewell had nearly 50000 specimens. Cockayne is also credited with influencing Kettlewell in the study of population genetics. In 1943 he became president of the Royal Entomological Society of London. He received an OBE for his work in entomology in 1954.