D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

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D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson bigraphy, stories - British mathematical biologist

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson : biography

2 May 1860 – 21 June 1948

Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE (2 May 1860 – 21 June 1948) was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form, written largely in Dundee in 1915. Peter Medawar, the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, called it "the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue".Bretscher, Otto. Linear algebra with applications. 3rd edition. Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. Page 66. The book pioneered the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns are formed in plants and animals.

Life

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson was the son of D’Arcy Thompson (1829–1902), Professor of Greek at Queen’s College, Galway. (The latter was perhaps named for D’Arcy Wentworth (1762–1827) who narrowly escaped conviction on a fourth charge of highway robbery by volunteering for transportation to Botany Bay as an assistant surgeon, arriving in June 1790.) He received his secondary education at the Edinburgh Academy, which he attended from 1870 to 1877, and won the 1st Edinburgh Academical Club Prize in 1877.The Edinburgh Academy Register 1824-1914, printed by T & A Constable for the Edinburgh Academical Club, 1914. Page 328. In 1878, he matriculated at University of Edinburgh to study medicine. Two years later, he shifted his studies to Trinity College in the University of Cambridge, obtaining the Bachelor of Arts in Natural Science in 1883. In 1884, he was appointed Professor of Biology (later Natural History) at University College, Dundee, a post he held for 32 years. One of his first tasks was to create a Zoology Museum for teaching and research – at the time this was regarded as one of the largest in the country, specialising in Arctic zoology due to D’Arcy’s links to the Dundee whalers. In 1896 and 1897, D’Arcy went on his own epic expeditions to the Bering Straits, representing the British Government in an international inquiry into the fur seal industry. He took the opportunity to collect many valuable specimens for his museum, including a Japanese spider crab (still in the museum today) and the rare skeleton of a Steller’s Sea Cow. In 1917, D’Arcy was appointed to the Chair of Natural History at St Andrews University, remaining there for the last 31 years of his life. D’Arcy Thompson became a well known and much loved figure in the town, walking its streets in gym shoes with a parrot on his shoulder, and contributing a stylish and scholarly essay on St Andrews to Country Life magazine in October 1923. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1916, he was knighted in 1937 and was awarded the Darwin Medal in 1946. For his revised On Growth and Form Thompson was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1942.

Lectures

In 1918 Wentworth Thompson was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Fish of the Sea.

D’Arcy 150th anniversary

The 150th anniversary of D’Arcy’s birth was celebrated in 2010 with a programme of events and exhibitions at the University of Dundee and the University of St Andrews; the main lecture theatre in the University of Dundee’s Tower Building was renamed in his honour. A publication exploring D’Arcy’s work in Dundee and the history of his Zoology Museum was published by University of Dundee Museum Services and launched at the opening of an exhibition, D’Arcy Thompson: Growth and Form, in the Lamb Gallery. D’Arcy displays were also staged at Discovery Point and Sensation Science Centre.

Notes

Museum and archives

The original Zoology Museum established by D’Arcy Thompson at Dundee became neglected after his move to St. Andrews and in 1956 the building it was housed in was scheduled for demolition and the museum collection was dispersed, with some parts going to the British Museum. However a core teaching collection was retained and now form the core of the University of Dundee’s D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, which can be found in the basement of the University’s Carnelley Building and is open to the public on Friday afternoons in the summer, or by appointment.