Frederick Levi Attenborough ( AT-ən-bər-ə; 4 April 1887 – 20 March 1973) was an English academic and principal of University College, Leicester.
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Biography
He was the son of Mary (née Saxton) and Frederick August Attenborough of Stapleford, Nottinghamshire. His parents were devout Methodists. He was educated at schools in Long Eaton, Derbyshire. He became a teacher at the Long Eaton Higher Elementary School in 1913. The school was founded by Samuel Clegg, the headmaster, in 1910. He married the headmaster's daughter, Mary Clegg, in 1922.
In 1915, he attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a Foundation Scholar and Choral Exhibitioner, and gained a first class degree in the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos. From 1918 to 1920, he was a research student, and a fellow from 1920 to 1925. While a fellow, he published an edition and translation of the earliest English law-codes.
From 1925 to 1932, Attenborough was principal of the Borough Road Training College in Isleworth (which became the West London Institute of Higher Education in 1976).
Attenborough was principal of University College, Leicester from 1932 to 1951, and lived with his family on campus in College House (which now houses part of the university's Mathematics department).
Just prior to the Second World War, the Attenboroughs took in two Kindertransport Jewish refugee children, a pair of sisters, Irene Goldschmitt (married name) and Helga Waldmann (married name) who lived with them in College House. One of them encouraged his son David's fascination with the natural world by giving him a piece of amber.