Henry Cole (1808–82)

Civil servant. Secretary, Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. A leading organiser of the Great Exhibition (1851); later promoted the government purchase of land in South Kensington for a complex of museums and schools of science and the decorative and industrial arts, including the South Kensington Museum (later divided into the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum). Knighted, 1875.