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Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes (March 25, 1887 in Cambridge - July 5, 1982, in Cambridge) was an English surgeon, physician, scholar and bibliophile. He was the brother of the economist John Maynard Keynes.
Geoffrey Keynes was the son of John Neville Keynes (pronounced "Canes"), an economics lecturer at Cambridge University and Florence Ada Brown, a successful author and a social reformist.
He graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge University and then qualified as a surgeon with the Royal College of Surgeons in London. He served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I and then worked as a consultant surgeon, becoming an expert in blood transfusion.
He married Margaret Elizabeth Darwin who was the daughter of Sir George Howard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin.
As a result of a friendship begun at Cambridge, Geoffrey Keynes was appointed Literary Executor for the estate of Rupert Brooke upon the latter's death in 1915.
He maintained a passionate interest in English Literature and devoted a large amount of his time to literary scholarship and the science of bibliography. He was one of the greatest authorities on the literary and artistic work of William Blake and produced biographies and bibliographies of English writers such as Sir Thomas Browne, John Evelyn, Siegfried Sassoon, John Donne and Jane Austen. He was also a pioneer in the history of science, with studies of John Ray, William Harvey and Robert Hooke.
His autobiography "The Gates of Memory" was published in 1981.
George Keynes' children are Quentin Keynes (1921 - 2003) and Richard Keynes (born 1919). Quentin Keynes was also a bibliophile.
Further Information
- Geoffrey Keynes: The Gates of Memory. Oxford University Press; ISBN 0198126573
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