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Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS
FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...
(2 May 1860 – 21 June 1948) was a Scottish
biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize ...
,
mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...
and classics scholar. He was a pioneer of
mathematical and theoretical biology Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development ...
, travelled on expeditions to the Bering Strait and held the position of Professor of Natural History at
University College, Dundee A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
for 32 years, then at
St Andrews St Andrews ( la, S. Andrea(s); sco, Saunt Aundraes; gd, Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fourt ...
for 31 years. He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
, was
knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the G ...
, and received the
Darwin Medal The Darwin Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "distinction in evolution, biological diversity and developmental, population and organismal biology". In 1885, International Darwin Memorial Fund was transferred to the ...
and the
Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology study published in a three- to five-year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917. L ...
. Thompson is remembered as the author of the 1917 book ''
On Growth and Form ''On Growth and Form'' is a book by the Scottish mathematical biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). The book is long – 793 pages in the first edition of 1917, 1116 pages in the second edition of 1942. The book covers many top ...
'', which led the way for the scientific explanation of
morphogenesis Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of deve ...
, the process by which
patterns A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...
and body structures are formed in plants and animals. Thompson's description of the mathematical beauty of nature, and the mathematical basis of the forms of animals and plants, stimulated thinkers as diverse as
Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
, C. H. Waddington,
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical ...
,
René Thom René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he becam ...
,
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthr ...
,
Eduardo Paolozzi Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi (, ; 7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005) was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art. Early years Eduardo Paolozzi was born on 7 March ...
,
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
,
Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature ...
and
Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
.


Life


Early life

Thompson was born at 3 Brandon Street in Edinburgh to Fanny Gamgee (sister of Sampson Gamgee) and
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE (2 May 1860 – 21 June 1948) was a Scottish biologist, mathematician and classics scholar. He was a pioneer of mathematical and theoretical biology Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomat ...
(1829–1902), Classics Master at
Edinburgh Academy The Edinburgh Academy is an independent day school in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was opened in 1824. The original building, on Henderson Row in the city's New Town, is now part of the Senior School. The Junior School is located on Arboretum Ro ...
and later Professor of Greek at
Queen's College, Galway The University of Galway ( ga, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe) is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. A tertiary education and research institution, the university was awarded the full five QS stars for excellence in 201 ...
. His mother, Fanny Gamgee (1840–1860) died 9 days after his birth as a result of complicationsJ J O'Connor and E F Robertso
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson Biography
School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland, October 2003, retrieved 30 March 2016
and he was brought up by his maternal grandfather Joseph Gamgee (1801–1895), David Raitt Robertson Burtbr>Obituary
in James B Salmond (ed.), Veterum Laudes (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1950), 108–119
a veterinary surgeon. He lived with his grandfather and uncle, John Gamgee, at 12 Castle Terrace, facing north onto
Edinburgh Castle Edinburgh Castle is a historic castle in Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. It stands on Castle Rock (Edinburgh), Castle Rock, which has been occupied by humans since at least the Iron Age, although the nature of the early settlement is unclear. ...
. From 1870 to 1877 he attended The Edinburgh Academy and won the 1st Edinburgh Academical Club Prize in 1877. In 1878, he
matriculate Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination. Australia In Australia, the term "matriculation" is seldom used now. ...
d at the
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...
to study medicine. Two years later, he moved to
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
to study
zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, an ...
.PROF SIR D'ARCY THOMPSON DEAD
, The Scotman, 22 June 1948
As a student at Cambridge, D'Arcy Thompson was first a
sizar At Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Cambridge, a sizar is an undergraduate who receives some form of assistance such as meals, lower fees or lodging during his or her period of study, in some cases in return for doing a defined jo ...
, and then received a scholarship. To earn money to support his education he translated Hermann Müller's work on the fertilisation of flowers, because the topic appealed to him. His translation was published in 1883, and included an introduction by Charles Darwin. He speculated later, that if he had chosen to translate
Wilhelm Olbers Focke Wilhelm Olbers Focke (5 April 1834, Bremen – 29 September 1922, Bremen) was a medical doctor and botanist who in 1881 published a significant work on plant breeding entitled ''Die Pflanzen-Mischlinge, Ein Beitrag zur Biologie der Gewächse'' (The ...
's hybridisation of flowers, he "might have anticipated the discovery of Mendel by twenty years". He graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
degree in
Natural Science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
in 1883.


Career

From 1883 to 1884, Thompson stayed in Cambridge as a Junior Demonstrator in physiology, teaching students. In 1884, he was appointed Professor of Biology (later Natural History) at
University College, Dundee A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
, a post he held for 32 years. One of his first tasks was to create a
Zoology Museum The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology ...
for teaching and research, now named after him. In 1885 he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
. His proposers were
Patrick Geddes Sir Patrick Geddes (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a British biologist, sociologist, Comtean positivist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning ...
, Frank W. Young,
William Evans Hoyle Dr William Evans Hoyle FRSE (28 January 1855 – 7 February 1926) was a noted British zoologist. A specialist in deep sea creatures he worked on classification and illustrations from the Challenger Expedition from 1882 to 1888. Life Hoyle w ...
and
Daniel John Cunningham Daniel John Cunningham M.D., D.C.L., LL. D. F.R.S., F.R.S.E. F.R.A.I. (15 April 1850 – 23 July 1909) was a Scottish physician, zoologist, and anatomist, famous for ''Cunningham's Text-book of Anatomy'' and ''Cunningham's Manual of Pra ...
. He served as vice president to the Society from 1916 to 1919 and as president from 1934 to 1939. In 1896 and 1897, he went on expeditions to the Bering Straits, representing the British Government in an international inquiry into the
fur seal Fur seals are any of nine species of pinnipeds belonging to the subfamily Arctocephalinae in the family '' Otariidae''. They are much more closely related to sea lions than true seals, and share with them external ears (pinnae), relatively l ...
industry to assess the fur seal's declining numbers. "Thompson's diplomacy avoided an international incident" between Russia and the United States which both had hunting interests in this area.Lecture Theatre renamed in honour of D'arcy Thompson
University of Dundee, External Relations, Press Office, 14 March 2006
His final report for the government drew attention also to the near extinction of the
sea otter The sea otter (''Enhydra lutris'') is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between , making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smal ...
and whale populations. He became one of the first to press for conservation agreements, and his recommendations contributed to the issuing of species protection orders. He subsequently was appointed Scientific Adviser to the Fisheries Board of Scotland and later, representative to the
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES; french: Conseil International de l'Exploration de la Mer, ''CIEM'') is a regional fishery advisory body and the world's oldest intergovernmental science organization. ICES is headqua ...
. He took the opportunity to collect many valuable specimens for his museum, one of the largest in the country at the time, specialising in Arctic zoology, through his links to the Dundee whalers. The D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum still has (in 2012) the
Japanese spider crab The Japanese spider crab (''Macrocheira kaempferi'') is a species of marine crab that lives in the waters around Japan. It has the largest known leg-span of any arthropod. It goes through three main larval stages along with a prezoeal stage to gr ...
that he collected, and the rare skeleton of a
Steller's Sea Cow Steller's sea cow (''Hydrodamalis gigas'') is an extinct sirenian described by Georg Wilhelm Steller in 1741. At that time, it was found only around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia; its range extended across ...
. Whilst in Dundee, Thompson sat on the committee of management of the Dundee Private Hospital for Women. He was a founder member of the Dundee Social Union and pressed for it "to buy four slum properties in the town", which they renovated so that "the poorest families of Dundee could live there." He encouraged and supported the social reformer
Mary Lily Walker Mary Lily Walker (5 July 1863 – 1 July 1913) was a Scottish social reformer, who worked to improve conditions for women and children working in industrial Dundee. The ninth child of a Dundee solicitor, Walker was born into a relatively affluent ...
in her work with the social union. In 1917, aged 57, Thompson was appointed to the Chair of Natural History at the
University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...
, where he remained for the last 31 years of his life. In 1918 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on ''The Fish of the Sea''. The German British mathematician Walter Ledermann described in his memoir how, as an assistant in Mathematics, he met the biology Professor Thompson at St Andrews in the mid 1930s and how Thompson "was fond of exercising his skills as an amateur of mathematics", that "he used quite sophisticated mathematical methods to elucidate the shapes that occur in the living world" and " ..differential equations, a subject which evidently lay outside d'Arcy Thompson's fields of knowledge at that time." Ledermann wrote how on one occasion he helped him, working and writing out the answer to his question. In '' Country Life'' magazine in October 1923, he wrote:


Family

On 4 July 1901 Thompson married Maureen, elder daughter of William Drury, of Dublin. His wife and three daughters survived him. He died at his home in
St Andrews St Andrews ( la, S. Andrea(s); sco, Saunt Aundraes; gd, Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fourt ...
after flying home from India in 1948, at the age of 87, having attended the Science Congress at Delhi, and staying in India for some months. Upon returning, "he suffered a breakdown in health, from which he never fully recovered." He is buried with his maternal grandparents, the Gamgees, and half-sisters in
Dean Cemetery The Dean Cemetery is a historically important Victorian cemetery north of the Dean Village, west of Edinburgh city centre, in Scotland. It lies between Queensferry Road and the Water of Leith, bounded on its east side by Dean Path and o ...
in western Edinburgh.


Major works


''History of Animals''

In 1910, Thompson published his translation of
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
's ''
History of Animals ''History of Animals'' ( grc-gre, Τῶν περὶ τὰ ζῷα ἱστοριῶν, ''Ton peri ta zoia historion'', "Inquiries on Animals"; la, Historia Animalium, "History of Animals") is one of the major Aristotle's biology, texts on biolo ...
''. He had worked on the enormous task intermittently for many years. It was not the first translation of the book into English, but the earlier attempts by Thomas Taylor (1809) and Richard Cresswell (1862) were inaccurate, and criticised at the time as showing "not only an inadequate knowledge of Greek, but an extremely imperfect acquaintance with zoology". Thompson's version benefited from his excellent Greek, his expertise in zoology, his "full" knowledge of
Aristotle's biology Aristotle's biology is the theory of biology, grounded in systematic observation and collection of data, mainly zoological, embodied in Aristotle's books on the science. Many of his observations were made during his stay on the island of Le ...
, and his command of the English language, resulting in a fine translation, "correct, free and .. idiomatic". More recently, the evolutionary biologist
Armand Leroi Armand Marie Leroi (born 16 July 1964) is a New Zealand-born Dutch author, broadcaster, and professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College in London. He received the Guardian First Book Award in 2004 for his book ''Muta ...
admired Thompson's translation:


''On Growth and Form''

Thompson's most famous work, ''
On Growth and Form ''On Growth and Form'' is a book by the Scottish mathematical biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). The book is long – 793 pages in the first edition of 1917, 1116 pages in the second edition of 1942. The book covers many top ...
'' led the way for the scientific explanation of
morphogenesis Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of deve ...
, the process by which
patterns A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...
and body structures are formed in plants and animals. It was written in Dundee, mostly in 1915, though wartime shortages and his many last-minute alterations delayed publication until 1917. The central theme of the book is that biologists of its author's day overemphasized
evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
as the fundamental determinant of the form and structure of living organisms, and underemphasized the roles of physical laws and
mechanics Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objec ...
. He had previously criticized
Darwinism Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations tha ...
in his paper ''Some Difficulties of Darwinism'' in an 1884 meeting for the
British Association for the Advancement of Science The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chi ...
. ''On Growth and Form'' explained in detail why he believed Darwinism to be an inadequate explanation for the origin of new
species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...
. He did not openly reject
natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
, but regarded it as secondary to the origin of biological form. Instead, he advocated
structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader s ...
as an alternative to natural selection in governing the form of species, with a hint that
vitalism Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Wher ...
was the unseen driving force. On the concept of
allometry Allometry is the study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and finally behaviour, first outlined by Otto Snell in 1892, by D'Arcy Thompson in 1917 in '' On Growth and Form'' and by Julian Huxley in 1932. Overview Allom ...
, the study of the relationship of body size and shape, Thompson wrote: Using a mass of examples, Thompson pointed out correlations between biological forms and mechanical phenomena. He showed the similarity in the forms of
jellyfish Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbre ...
and the forms of drops of liquid falling into
viscous The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the in ...
fluid, and between the internal supporting structures in the hollow bones of birds and well-known engineering
truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...
designs. He described
phyllotaxis In botany, phyllotaxis () or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature. Leaf arrangement The basic arrangements of leaves on a stem are opposite and alterna ...
(numerical relationships between spiral structures in plants) and its relationship to the
Fibonacci sequence In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted , form a sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start the sequence from ...
. Perhaps the most famous part of the work is chapter XVII, "The Comparison of Related Forms," where Thompson explored the degree to which differences in the forms of related animals could be described by means of relatively simple mathematical transformations. The book is a work in the "descriptive" tradition; Thompson did not articulate his insights in the form of experimental hypotheses that can be tested. He was aware of this, saying that "This book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is 'all preface' from beginning to end."


Honours

Elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1916, he was knighted in 1937 and received the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society in 1938. He was awarded the
Darwin Medal The Darwin Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "distinction in evolution, biological diversity and developmental, population and organismal biology". In 1885, International Darwin Memorial Fund was transferred to the ...
in 1946. For his revised ''On Growth and Form'', he was awarded the
Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology study published in a three- to five-year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917. L ...
from the
United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...
in 1942. He was elected Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
in 1885, and was active in the Society over many years, serving as president from 1934 to 1939.


Legacy


Interdisciplinary influence

''On Growth and Form'' has inspired thinkers including the biologists
Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
,
Conrad Hal Waddington Conrad Hal Waddington (8 November 1905 – 26 September 1975) was a British developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary developm ...
and
Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Goul ...
, the mathematicians
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical ...
and
René Thom René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he becam ...
, the anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthr ...
and artists including Richard Hamilton,
Eduardo Paolozzi Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi (, ; 7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005) was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art. Early years Eduardo Paolozzi was born on 7 March ...
, and
Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life. Background and training Nicholson was born on 10 April 1894 in De ...
with his ideas on the mathematical basis of the forms of animals, and perhaps especially on
morphogenesis Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of deve ...
.
Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splas ...
owned a copy. Waddington and other developmental biologists were struck particularly by the chapter on Thompson's "Theory of Transformations", where he showed that the various shapes of related species (such as of fish) could be presented as geometric transformations, anticipating the
evolutionary developmental biology Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved. The field grew from 19th-century beginn ...
of a century later. The book led Turing to write a famous paper "
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" is an article that the English mathematician Alan Turing wrote in 1952. It describes how patterns in nature, such as stripes and spirals, can arise naturally from a homogeneous, uniform state. The theory, w ...
" on how patterns such as those seen on the skins of animals can emerge from a simple chemical system. Lévi-Strauss cites Thompson in his 1963 book ''Structural Anthropology''. ''On Growth and Form'' is seen as a classic text in architecture and is admired by architects "for its exploration of natural geometries in the dynamics of growth and physical processes." The architects and designers
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
,
László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the ...
and
Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
were inspired by the book.
Peter Medawar Sir Peter Brian Medawar (; 28 February 1915 – 2 October 1987) was a Brazilian-British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissu ...
, 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".


150th anniversary

In 2010, the 150th anniversary of his birth was celebrated with events and exhibitions at the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews; the main lecture theatre in the University of Dundee's Tower Building was renamed in his honour, a publication exploring his work in Dundee and the history of his
Zoology Museum The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology ...
was published by University of Dundee Museum Services, and an exhibition on his work was held in the city.


Museum and archives

The original
Zoology Museum The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology ...
at Dundee became neglected after his move to St Andrews. In 1956 the building, which it was housed in, was scheduled for demolition and the museum collection was dispersed, with some parts going to the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. A teaching collection was retained and forms the core of the University of Dundee's current D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum. In 2011, the University of Dundee was awarded a £100,000 grant by The Art Fund to build a collection of art inspired by his ideas and collections, much of it displayed in the Museum. Special Collections at the University of St Andrews hold Thompson's personal papers which include over 30,000 items. Archive Services at the University of Dundee hold records of his time at Dundee, and a collection of papers relating to Thompson collected by Professor Alexander David Peacock, a later holder of the chair of Natural History at University College, Dundee. In 1892 D'Arcy Thompson donated
Davis Straits Davis Strait is a northern arm of the Atlantic Ocean that lies north of the Labrador Sea. It lies between mid-western Greenland and Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada. To the north is Baffin Bay. The strait was named for the English explorer John ...
specimens of
crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...
s, pycnogonids, and other invertebrates to the
Cambridge University Museum of Zoology The University Museum of Zoology is a museum of the University of Cambridge and part of the research community of the Department of Zoology. The public is welcome and admission is free (2018). The Museum of Zoology is in the David Attenborough ...
.


Selected publications

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson published around 300 articles and books during his career. * 1885.
A bibliography of Protozoa, sponges, Coelenterata, and worms, including also the Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, and Tunicata, for the years 1861–1883.
' Cambridge University Press. * 1895.
Glossary of Greek Birds.
' Oxford University Press. * 1897.
Report by Professor D'Arcy Thompson on his mission to the Behring Sea in 1896.
Her Majesty's Stationery Office. * 1910

(translation). * 1913.
On Aristotle as a biologist with a prooemion on Herbert Spencer.
' Oxford University Press. Being the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered before the University of Oxford, 14 February 1913. * 1917.
On Growth and Form
'. Cambridge University Press. :: �
1945 Edition at archive.org
*1940
''Science and the Classics''
Oxford University Press, 264 pp. *1947. Glossary of Greek Fishes.


See also

*
Biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...
*
Evolutionary developmental biology Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved. The field grew from 19th-century beginn ...
* Raoul Heinrich Francé (''Die Pflanze als Erfinder'', 1920)


Notes


References


Further reading

* Thompson, D. W., 1992. ''On Growth and Form''. Dover reprint of 1942 2nd ed. (1st ed., 1917). *
Original 1945 reprint available online
at
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
* --------, 1992. ''On Growth and Form''. Cambridge Univ. Press. Abridged edition by
John Tyler Bonner John Tyler Bonner (May 12, 1920 – February 7, 2019) was an American biologist who was a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He was a pioneer in the use of cellular slime molds to understand ...
. . *
Online
at
Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
* Caudwell, C and Jarron, M, 2010. ''D'Arcy Thompson and his Zoology Museum in Dundee''. University of Dundee Museum Services. * Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, The Remarkable Gamgees (Edinburgh, 1974). * Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson : the scholar-naturalist, 1860–1948 (London, 1958). **postscript by Peter Medawar. Pluto's Republic: Incorporating The Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought. 368 pages, Oxford University Press (11 November 1982), * The correspondence and papers of Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948), St Andrews : University Library (1987). * * M Kemp, Spirals of life: D'Arcy Thompson and Theodore Cook, with Leonardo and Durer in retrospect, Physis Riv. Internaz. Storia Sci. (NS) 32 (1) (1995), 37–54 * *


External links

* *
D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum
Dundee University

School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland *
John Milnor John Willard Milnor (born February 20, 1931) is an American mathematician known for his work in differential topology, algebraic K-theory and low-dimensional holomorphic dynamical systems. Milnor is a distinguished professor at Stony Brook Univ ...

Geometry of Growth and Form: Commentary on D'Arcy Thompson
lecture, Video (55min), Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Stony Brook University, 24 September 2010

Biography, Authors JOC/EFR © October 2003, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Darcy Wentworth 1860 births 1948 deaths Academics from Edinburgh People educated at Edinburgh Academy People associated with Fife Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Dundee Academics of the University of St Andrews Scottish biologists Scottish mathematicians Scottish classical scholars Theoretical biologists Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Presidents of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society Companions of the Order of the Bath Knights Bachelor Scottish knights Museum founders 19th-century British zoologists 20th-century British zoologists Scientists from Edinburgh