by W. T. Calman, rev. D. S. Falconer
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Thompson, Sir D'Arcy Wentworth (1860-1948), zoologist and classical scholar, was born at 3 Brandon Street, Edinburgh, on 2 May 1860, the only son of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1829-1902), then a classical master at the Edinburgh Academy, and his first wife, Fanny (1838-1860), daughter of Joseph Gamgee, veterinary surgeon. His mother died when he was born, and when, in 1863, his father was appointed professor of Greek at Queen's College, Galway, the young D'Arcy was left in charge of an aunt in the home of his maternal grandfather. It was to his grandfather that he was accustomed to attribute the first awakening of his interest in biology. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy (1870-77) and, after three years as a medical student at Edinburgh University where he came under the influence of Sir C. Wyville Thomson, then just returned from the Challenger expedition, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1880. There he joined the talented group of young men gathered round Michael Foster and F. M. Balfour, who were then laying the foundations of the modern Cambridge school of biology. He was awarded firsts in both parts of the natural sciences tripos (1882, 1883), and spent a year as demonstrator in physiology under Foster. In 1884 he was appointed professor of biology (later altered to natural history) in the recently founded University College in Dundee. Several chairs were being filled at that time. He recounted how he applied for three of them--biology, Greek, and mathematics--and was offered his choice. 'So,' he said, 'I chose biology because it was the one I knew least about.' When, in 1897, the college was incorporated in the University of St Andrews he became a member of the senate in the university and in 1917, on the retirement of W. C. M'Intosh, he was translated to the senior chair of natural history in the United College of the university, and thenceforward made his home in St Andrews.
While at Dundee D'Arcy Thompson devoted much attention to building up a teaching museum of zoology which, with the help of the last of the Dundee whalers, became very rich in specimens from the Arctic Seas. In 1896 and again in 1897 he visited the Pribylov Islands as a member of the British-American commission of inquiry on the fur seal fishery in the Bering Sea, and in the latter year he also represented the British government at the international conference on the subject at Washington. For his services on these occasions he was appointed CB in 1898. In that year he was also made a member of the fishery board for Scotland, a position which he held until the supersession of the board in 1939. In 1901 D'Arcy Thompson married Ada Maureen (d. 1949), daughter of William B. Drury, solicitor of Dublin; there were three daughters of the marriage. In 1902 he became one of the British representatives on the newly formed International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. To the official publications of this and many other bodies he contributed reports and papers on fishery statistics, oceanography, and other matters. He also wrote many papers and articles on other subjects. A large number of these were on matters of classical scholarship, especially on the natural history of ancient writers. His major works in this field were A Glossary of Greek Birds (1895; 2nd edn, 1936), an annotated translation of Aristotle's Historia animalium (1910), and A Glossary of Greek Fishes (1945).
The biological work for which D'Arcy Thompson is best-known is his book On Growth and Form (1917; rev. 2nd edn, 1942) which brought together classical and modern material. Of this book Sir Peter Medawar wrote that it was
beyond comparison the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue. There is a combination here of elegance of style with perfect, absolutely unfailing clarity, that has never to my knowledge been surpassed. (p. 232)
It dealt with the causes of the shapes of organisms and their structures. In On Growth and Form D'Arcy Thompson first developed the notion that biological structures must conform to the laws of physics, expressible in mathematical form; physics must come before function in determining shape. He showed, for example, that, as strengths of bones and muscles depend on their cross-sectional areas, while weight depends on volume, larger animals, to support themselves, must have proportionately thicker legs. The idea that the laws of physics profoundly influence biological structures came to permeate all of biology. However, D'Arcy Thompson realized that physics was not alone responsible for determining biological structure, and in the second edition he wrote, 'the twofold problem of accumulated inheritance, and of perfect structural adaptation, confronts us once again and passes all our understanding'.
D'Arcy Thompson did no experimental work, and made no attempt to test his ideas. This was largely because the mathematical calculations required were too complex to be made with the aids to calculation then available. His work founded no school of followers to extend it, though his ideas were applied in many diverse fields, as was shown by a volume of essays by a group of biologists on the occasion of his completing sixty years as a professor (W. E. Le Gros Clark and P. B. Medawar, eds., Essays on Growth and Form, 1945).
In the later years of his long life D'Arcy Thompson received many honours from universities and other learned bodies ranging from Aberdeen to Johannesburg, and from Boston (USA) to Delhi. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1885 and was its president in 1934-9. He was elected FRS in 1916, was a vice-president in 1931-3, and received the Darwin medal in 1946. The Linnean Society awarded him the Linnean gold medal in 1938. He was president of the Classical Association in 1929, and of the Scottish Royal Geographical Society from 1942. He was knighted in 1937.
D'Arcy Thompson was a man of very distinguished presence, a ready and polished speaker, whose lectures and addresses displayed a remarkable range of interests and knowledge. He loved teaching, and his lectures were invariably fascinating. He taught to the very last, for even in his final illness he gathered his honours students in his sick-room for memorable discussions. He died at his home, 44 South Street, St Andrews, on 21 June 1948; his widow died the following year.
W. T. CALMAN, rev. D. S. FALCONER
Sources
R. D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson: the scholar-naturalist, 1860-1948 (1958)
C. Dobell, Obits. FRS, 6 (1948-9), 599-617
P. B. Medawar, postscript, in R. D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson: the scholar-naturalist, 1860-1948 (1958), 219-33; repr. in The art of the soluble (1967), 21-35
S. J. Gould, 'D'Arcy Thompson and the science of form', Topics in the philosophy of biology, ed. M. Greene and E. Mendelsohn (1976), 66-97
W. E. Le Gros Clark and P. B. Medawar, eds., Essays on growth and form (1945) [incl. comprehensive bibliography to 1944]
personal knowledge (2004)
CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1948)
Archives
Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, corresp.
U. St Andr. L., corresp. and papers
University of Dundee, corresp. and papers | BL, letters to W. E. Crum, Add. MS 45689
Elgin Museum, Elgin, letters to Dr George Gordon
Rice University, Houston, Texas, corresp. with Sir Julian Huxley
U. St Andr. L., letters to D. R. R. Burt
Likenesses
W. Stoneman, photograph, 1933, NPG
D. S. Ewart, oils, Royal Society of Edinburgh
D. S. Ewart, oils, U. St Andr., zoological department
A. Forrest, bronze head, U. St Andr. L.
Wealth at death
£12,965 12s. 10d.: confirmation, 7 Oct 1948, CCI
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