George Parker Bidder III

George Parker Bidder III (born May 21, 1863 in London ; died December 31, 1954 in Cambridge ) was a British marine biologist who mainly dealt with spongiology . He was president of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) and founded The Company of Biologists . He was also an entrepreneur and poet.

Life

George Parker Bidder III was born on May 21, 1863 to the lawyer George Parker Bidder II (1836-1896) and Anna McClean (1839-1910). His paternal grandfather was the engineer and arithmetic artist George Parker Bidder and his maternal grandfather was John Robinson McClean , a British politician and Liberal Party member . Bidder attended King's Preparatory School in Brighton and Harrow School in Harrow , London , where he won the Poem Prize in 1881. He then studied zoology at University College London for a year under Sir Edwin Ray Lankester , founder of the Marine Biological Association . By 1886 he completed the Natural Sciences Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge .

Stays in Naples aroused his interest in archeology and sculpture , which led to the publication of the article "Arcus" in the 35th edition of the Journal of Philology. In 1890 he bought a hotel near the Naples Zoological Station that was threatened with closure , which he sold again in 1908 and which still bears the name "Grand Hotel Parkers" today.

In 1899 he married Marion Greenwood, a British physiologist and one of the first women to do independent research in Cambridge, and moved to Plymouth . In 1902 the couple moved to Cambridge, where Bidder lived until his death. The couple had two daughters, one of whom, Anna McClean Bidder (1903-2001), became a zoologist. At the time of his death, Bidder had three grandchildren.

After his father's death in 1896, Bidder inherited shares in a dry dock, the Cannock Chase Colliery , a Danish gas works, a lead mine in Cornwall and a farm in Mitcham . From 1897 to 1908 he was managing director of Cannock Chase Colliery and from 1915 to 1919 its chairman.

From 1903 the first signs of tuberculosis appeared, from which he had fully recovered after about ten to twelve years. Due to his illness, he was exempt from military service in World War I and was unable to perform microscope work during this time. During this time he devoted himself increasingly to the organization of the MBA , the family business and discovered his interest in marine geology , especially in coastal erosion , during his regular vacation trips with his family to Mundesley on the Norfolk coast .

Bidder died in Cambridge on December 31, 1954. A Times obituary dated Jan. 1, 1955 said:

"Many men and women from all branches of research and from all walks of life will painfully regret his passing."

- The Times

Research activities

Naples Zoological Station

In 1887 he began to work for the Naples Zoological Station in Italy. In 1887, 1888 and 1889 he occupied the Cambridge University table in the station. A long friendship developed with the Dohrn family and he returned to the station as a guest of Dohrn in 1890, 1891 and 1893. He supported the zoological station financially for several years and after the Second World War he campaigned for the Royal Society to support the reconstruction and maintenance of the station on a larger scale. Bidder's main research interest was spongiology, in particular the study of the hydraulic system of sponges. Much of his work on sponges was written at the Zoological Station, but was only published later.

The Marine Biological Association

He joined the MBA in 1893 and became a board member in 1899. From 1893 to 1896 he was a regular visitor, but had to interrupt his activities there after the death of his father and then resumed in 1899.

In the laboratories in Plymouth, he continued to work on the sponges, but also studied the movements of benthos . Bidder campaigned strongly for the maintenance and expansion of the MBA , which had great financial difficulties at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1902, Bidder bought a 35 m (115 ft) steam tug, named SS Huxley in honor of the 1st President of the Association , and leased it to the MBA on very favorable terms . The MBA had been commissioned by the government under the auspices of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea to continue exploring the southern North Sea and the English Channel , but funds to acquire a suitable ship had been cut. Bidder was tasked with visiting the laboratory rented for the project in Lowestoft from 1903 to 1906 and reporting to the government. The existing ship Oithoma was used for research on the English Channel, and the SS Huxley in the southern North Sea . With the rental income and the proceeds from the sale of the ship in 1909, Bidder established the Ray Lankester Foundation , which enables individual scientists to work as visitors in the MBA 's laboratories.

He was president of the association from 1939 to 1945 and remained a member of the board from 1899 until his death. Bidder was made an honorary member after his departure. The National Marine Biological Library houses the "Bidder Collection", which consists of 39 volumes of specialist books that he bequeathed to the library.

Bottom trailers

During his illness, Bidder was already looking for a solution to examine the various currents in the North Sea. He was looking for a way to check the differences in currents on the ocean floor and surface. To do this, he invented the so-called bottom-trailers - bottles whose weight was only slightly greater than that of seawater, so that they could drift near the seabed. Because of these bottom trailers and the associated flow investigations , Bidder was called up for research work on the HMS Vernon during the First World War .

From 1904 to 1906, Bidder let about 1000 bottles into the sea to prove the east-west current in the deep sea of ​​the North Sea. Those who found this message in a bottle were asked in English, Dutch and German to send the enclosed postcard to the MBA in Plymouth. Most of the bottles were returned to the institute within a few months of their discontinuation, but one bottle was not found on Amrum beach until April 2015 . The postcard for this bottle was duly sent to the MBA . A finder's reward in the amount of one shilling was guaranteed in the message in a bottle. The institute rewarded the return of the postcard with a schilling piece from the time. In March 2016, the Guinness World Records confirmed this bottle as the oldest message in a bottle to date. According to this, the bottle that was let into the sea on November 30, 1906, had been in transit for 108 years and 138 days.

Other offices and activities

In 1916 awarded the University of Cambridge, where he held spongiology lectures from 1920 to 1927, the Doctor of Science (ScD) .

Bidder campaigned for the advancement and recognition of zoology in Great Britain and held various offices in relevant associations and societies. So he was 1924 and 1931 Vice-President of the Linnean Society of London (Linné Society) and from 1928 to 1931 its zoological director ( Zoological Secretary ). In 1927 he was President of the Zoological Department of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . After the British Association did not agree to an annual meeting, he founded the Association of British Zoologists with Francis Balfour-Browne . Bidder was also Honorary Vice President of the Ray Society , 1928 1st Chairman of the South Western Union of Naturalists and 1929 1st Chairman of the Devonshire Association .

Bidder also bought the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science (later: Journal of Cell Science ) and in 1925 opened the Company of Biologists , a not-for-profit company dedicated to publishing biological journals and articles in order to disseminate research in the field of the biology of a large To be able to provide readership. He founded the Company of Biologists in order to be able to save The British Journal of Experimental Biology (now The Journal of Experimental Biology ) from bankruptcy.

In 1932, Bidder made a contribution to biogerontology by establishing a relationship between the onset of senescence and the end of growth based on observations on fish (trout). This theory, known as “Bidder's Hypothesis”, was refuted by numerous experiments, including a 1963 study by Alex Comfort on guppies , a species that also ages while growing . Bidder's hypothesis served as the basis for further gerontological research and discussions long after its publication.

Poems

Since his youth, Bidder has devoted much of his free time to writing poetry. The best known of these is Merlin's Youth from 1899. The following were published:

• By Southern Shore . A. Constable & Co., Westminster (1899)
• Merlin's Youth . A. Constable & Co., Westminster (1899) online

Publications (selection)

• Notes on excretion in sponges. Harrison and Sons, London (1892)
• The collar cells of heterocoela. In: Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 38: 9-43 (1895)
• The skeleton and classification of calcareous sponges. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society, 64: 61-76 (1898)
• Principal results of the experiments with bottom trailers. In: Rapports et Proces-verbaux des Reunions. Conseil Permanent International pour l'Exploration de la Mer, 6, pp. 35-42 (1906)
• The Relations of the Form of a Sponge to its currents. In: Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 266: 293-234 (1923)
• Bibliography of sponges, 1551-1913. , GCJ Vosmaer, ed. (1928)
• The importance of Brownian movements. In: Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London , pp. 82-95 (1931)
• Senescence. In: British Medical Journal 2: 585-585 (1932), PMC 2521615 (free full text)
• The perfection of sponges. In: Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Session 149, pp. 119-146 (1937)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} George Parker Bidder III ( English ) In: Marine Biological Association . Archived from the original on May 3, 2015. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 21, 2015. 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} F.S. Russell: Obituary George Parker Bidder III ( English , PDF, 5.34 MB) In: Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, 34 (1) . Pp. 1-13. 1955. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
3. ^ Arcus ( English ) In: Journal of Philology . Pp. 434-441. Retrieved on August 24, 2015.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ The Life and Legend of the Scientist - Hotelier . In: Grand Hotel Parker's website . Retrieved August 26, 2015.
5. ↑ ^{a b} E.F. Clark: George Parker Bidder . University of Rochester . Retrieved September 6, 2015.
6. ^ Karl Josef Partsch : The zoological station in Naples: model of international scientific cooperation . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980, ISBN 978-3-525-42210-6 , pp. 178 and 189 ( online ).
7. ^ Ray Lankester Investigatorship , MBA website , accessed September 3, 2015
8. ↑ Special Collections held at the NMBL ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , National Marine Biological Library website, accessed September 28, 2015  
9. ↑ Woman finds message in a bottle that is more than 100 years old . In: SpiegelOnline . August 19, 2015. Accessed August 23, 2015.
10. ↑ Oldest message in a bottle , on: guinnessworldrecords.de from March 17, 2016, accessed on April 20, 2016
11. ^ History website of the Company of Biologists , accessed October 6, 2015
12. ↑ Calow, P. (1978), Bidder's hypothesis revisited. Solution to some key problems associated with general molecular theory of aging. In: Gerontology 24 (6): 448-58. PMID 689379