Regius Professor of Zoology

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The fifth Regius Professor, John Graham Kerr

The Regius Professor of Zoology is a Regius Professorship at the University of Glasgow . It was founded in 1807 by a donation from King George III. founded as Regius Chair of Natural History . When a chair for geology was established in Glasgow in 1903 , the chair was renamed the Regius Chair of Zoology. It is the only Regius professorship in zoology in the UK . But there are still two chairs for Natural History, the Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen and the Regius Professor of Natural History in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh . In Glasgow there has been a second named chair for zoology since 1965, the John Graham Kerr Chair named after the fifth Regius professor John Graham Kerr .

History of the chair

George III founded the Regius Professorship primarily to appoint a curator for the collection of William Hunter . The professor also taught geology and zoology, which at that time were summarized under the collective term natural history . And although they were primarily intended to teach medical students the anatomy of animals, most professors preferred to teach geology. From 1858 zoology became a compulsory subject for medical students. Until the beginning of the 20th century, zoology essentially consisted of comparative anatomy.

The separation between zoology and geology at the University of Edinburgh in the 1870s only took place in Glagow when John Graham Kerr took over the professorship in 1902. In 1923, Kerr oversaw the opening of a building dedicated exclusively to zoology, now known as the Kerr Building. Kerr's interest in microscopy and research on protozoa led him to establish a world-class institute. In this institute, Monica Taylor developed a breed for Amoeba proteus , which students used to use under the microscope from then on. She also isolated strands that are still used in research to this day. She graduated in 1917 with D.Sc. and headed the biology department of Notre Dame Teaching Training College for many years . Margaret Jeppsi identified a new parasite in the human digestive tract, Dientamoeba fragilis , during her time at the chair . Muriel Robertson was one of the best and most famous students at Kerr's institute. In 1947 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as the first female zoologist . Her research examined African sleeping sickness and the development of the parasite in its vector , the tsetse fly, and thus made a significant contribution to tropical medicine . When Keith Vickerman started working at the university in 1967, he used the emerging electron microscopy to study the same parasite and its shell.

With Charles Maurice Yonge an exceptional 1944 was a marine biologist appointed Regius Professor. When the University Grants Committee offered the chair a professorship in taxonomy , Roy Crowson was given the teaching assignment. Crowson was known for his work with insects and is one of the most famous entomologists of his time.

Yonge's successor, David Richmond Newth , led a phase of expansion. Under his leadership, the department became one of the largest in Europe. The ornithology department achieved worldwide fame and produced graduates like Pat Monaghan .

Yonge succeeded Keith Vickerman in the professorship, who had been researching at the university since 1967. Vickerman retired in 1998 and the chair has not been replaced. Fifteen years after Vickerman withdrew from the professorship, Pat Monaghan became the tenth incumbent and the first woman to be appointed to the chair in 2013.

List of Regius Professors of Natural History / Regius Professors of Zoology

Surname name suffix from to Remarks
Lockhart Muirhead MA LL.D. 1808 1829 When King George III. sought a curator for the Hunter collection presumably for political reasons and Lockhart Muirhead, a Scottish Whig , was elected. He certainly took the necessary care and personally supervised the packaging and transport of the collection to Glasgow. Little is known of him professionally, except that he expanded the collection.
William Couper MAMD 1829 1857 Couper owed the Regius Professorship to his busy father, who was a university librarian. However, he was not inferior to his father in this respect, teaching chemistry as well as natural history and practicing in Glasgow. When he was unable to teach himself in recent years due to his deteriorating health, the university secretly began looking for a successor and recruited Rogers even before Couper's death.
Henry Darwin Rogers MA LL.D. 1857 1866 The Philadelphia- born Rogers had studied in Europe for two years, but then had a very successful career in the USA, which made him the state geologist of Pennsylvania . In 1855 he moved to Edinburgh, where he completed his work The Geology of Pennsylvania, a Government Survey (2 volumes, 1858). From 1857 he worked as a Regius Professor at the University of Glasgow.
John Young MD 1866 1902 As a doctor, Young was actually a career changer. His interest in natural history had already been awakened during his studies and after several years in the Ordnance Survey and with the support of Roderick Murchison , he was offered the chair. His contributions to research were meager, but he got his students excited about the subject.
Sir John Graham Kerr MA LL.DFRS 1902 1935 with the assumption of office by Kerr, the professorship was renamed Regius Professor of Zoology
Edward Hindle MA, Sc.D., Ph.D, FRSE, FLS 1935 1943 Hindle became interested in tropical medicine at an early age and made a name for himself as an entomologist and parasitologist . His most important discovery was a yellow fever vaccine . He was also able to clarify the path of infection for leishmaniasis . But he achieved greatest fame because he introduced Syrian golden hamsters as laboratory animals and also as pets .
Charles Maurice Yonge CBE Ph.DDSc. FRS 1944 1964

Yonge served in the British military from 1917 to 1918. In 1919 he took up his studies at the University of Edinburgh, which he graduated in 1922. He stayed to graduate with a Ph.D in 1924. This also gave him a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to deepen his studies at the University of Cambridge and a research stay at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. In 1927 he was involved in the preparation of an expedition to the Great Barrier Reef , which he led in 1928. The team of eighteen stayed on the reef for almost a year. The four-volume research report was supplemented by a work published by Yonge in 1930. In 1933, at the age of 34, Yonge became a professor at the University of Bristol , in 1944 he was appointed to the Regius Professorship and in 1946 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

David Richmond Newth B.Sc. Ph.D. 1965 1981 Under Newth's leadership, the zoology department in Glasgow grew into one of the largest in Europe. On top of that, he had a feeling for talented employees. He was responsible for the recruitment of his direct successor Keith Vickerman and his successor Pat Monaghan. In doing so, he did not renounce his own research fame, and became an internationally recognized capacity in the field of embryo research.
Keith Vickerman Ph.DDSc. FRSEFRS 1984 1998 Vickerman had developed an early interest in parasitic protozoa , the Trypanosomatida . His investigations into the adaptation of the parasites to the different environments in the vector and host as well as his findings on the survival mechanisms of the parasites opened up new ways of treating the diseases in humans and animals.
vacant 1998 2013 The professorship was not occupied during this period.
Pat Monaghan Ph.D., FRSE 2013 today Monaghan had studied under Newth in Glasgow and had done fundamental work in ornithology. Your Ph.D. earned it from the University of Durham

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Zoology (Regius Chair). The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Pat Monaghan takes up Regius Chair of Zoology . University News from the University of Glasgow; Retrieved July 8, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Veterinary, Medical and Life Sciences. Zoology. In: University of Glasgow website. Accessed December 31, 2018 .
  4. ^ Administrative / Biographical History. Department of Zoology, University of Glasgow, 1902–1994, accessed April 17, 2019 .
  5. ^ W Pat Monaghan takes up the Regius Chair of Zoology . my Science, December 23, 2012; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  6. ↑ Lockhart Muirhead. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  7. ↑ Henry Rogers. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  8. ↑ a b c d Rogers, Henry Darwin . In: The New International Encyclopædia ( Wikisource ).
  9. ↑ John Young. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  10. ↑ Thomas Annan; Portrait of John Young in the National Gallery.
  11. ↑ Sir John Graham Kerr. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  12. ^ A b Communication on the appointment of Edward Hindle as Regius Professor of Zoology at the University of Glasgow. In: London Gazette , October 25, 1935.
  13. ↑ Edward Hindle. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  14. ^ A b c d e P. CC Garnham: Edward Hindle. (PDF) 1886–1973, elected FRS 1942. In: Biographies of Fellows. Royal Society, accessed May 15, 2019 .
  15. ^ Charles Maurice Yonge. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  16. ↑ a b c d e f g h Frank N. Egerton: History of Ecological Sciences, Part 51: Formalizing Marine Ecology, 1870s to 1920s. In: ESAJournals website. October 2014, accessed April 15, 2019 .
  17. ^ David Newth. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  18. ↑ a b c d Veterinary, Medical and Life Sciences. Zoology. In: University of Glasgow website. Retrieved January 3, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Keith Vickerman. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.
  20. ^ A b Professor Keith Vickerman, zoologist and expert in parasitic protozoa-obituary. In: The Telegraph. June 26, 2016, accessed December 25, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Pat Monaghan. The University of Glasgow Story; accessed on January 21, 2015.