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. 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.
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