Born at Brooke Hall in
Brooke, Norfolk on 23 August 1768 and baptised at St. Peter's Church, Brooke, on 9 September, Astley Cooper was the son of the Rev Dr Samuel Cooper, a
clergyman of the
Church of England; his mother
Maria Susanna Cooper née Bransby wrote several epistolary novels. At the age of sixteen he was sent to London and placed under
Henry Cline (1750–1827), surgeon to
St Thomas' Hospital. From the first he devoted himself to the study of
anatomy, and had the privilege of attending the lectures of
John Hunter. In 1789 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas' Hospital, where in 1791 he became joint lecturer with Cline in anatomy and
surgery, and in 1800 he was appointed surgeon to
Guy's Hospital on the death of his uncle, William Cooper. Astley Cooper received the
Copley Medal in 1801 for two papers read before the
Royal Society of London on the destruction of the
tympanic membrane. In February 1802 or February 1805 he was elected a
Fellow of the Society. In 1805 he took an active part in the formation of the
Medical and Chirurgical Society of London and was its President in 1819. In 1804 he brought out the first, and in 1807 the second, part of his great work on
hernia, which added so largely to his reputation that in 1813 his annual professional income rose to 21,000 pounds sterling. In the same year he was appointed professor of
comparative anatomy to the
Royal College of Surgeons and was very popular as a lecturer. About six months afterwards he received a
baronetcy, which, as he had no son, was to descend to his nephew and adopted son, Astley Cooper. He was appointed sergeant surgeon to George IV in 1828. A statue by
Edward Hodges Baily was erected in
St Paul's Cathedral. Cooper lived at
Gadebridge House in the market town of
Hemel Hempstead. Due to his influence and vigorous lobbying, supported by other residents of the area, a railway line was constructed in the 1830s by the
London and Birmingham Railway to the south of the town instead of directly through it. This led to the citizens of Hemel Hempstead having no railway station in their town. == Legacy ==