Gray, Sir James

Sir James Gray, (born Oct. 14, 1891, London—died Dec. 14, 1975, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.), English zoologist who played a leading part in changing the main objective of 20th-century zoological research from evolutionary comparative anatomy to the functional analysis of living cells and living animals, particularly through his editorship (1925–54) of the Journal of Experimental Biology. He was noted for his work on the mechanism of cellular and animal movement.

Gray was educated and spent his career at Cambridge University, where he gradually established one of the major schools of biological research in Britain. In 1948 he received the royal medal of the Royal Society. He was knighted in 1954.

Beginning research as a cytologist, Gray at first particularly concerned himself with the mechanics of various kinds of cellular movements; he is the author of a standard work on experimental cytology (1931). Later he extended this application of mechanical principles to the analysis of animal movement in general and showed the importance of applying engineering principles to biological problems pertaining to movement. His works include Ciliary Movement (1928), Text-book of Experimental Cytology (1931), How Animals Move (1953), and Animal Locomotion (1968).