New University Buildings at Cambridge: New Department of Zoology

Abstract

The University of Cambridge only awoke to an interest in biological science about sixty years ago. The evolution controversy between Huxley and Owen at the British Association meeting at Cambridge in 1862 started it. There were at Cambridge collections of vertebrate animals, insects and birds, and both controversialists undoubtedly urged their proper housing. In consequence Cambridge decided to build a museum, the opening of which was followed by a proposal to create a professorship. Finally Newton was appointed professor in 1866. His department consisted of a room for himself, and here he used to meet all who cared to come, conducting informal classes. Arthur Balfour used to say that he enjoyed these, and he introduced his younger brother, Francis Maitland, who in the next ten years established embryology as a distinct division of animal science. Newton lent F. M. Balfour his private room for practical classes in 1875, and the University created a chair of animal morphology for him in May 1882, but he lost his life when climbing a spur of Mont Blanc two months later. Among his pupils in this period were Sedgwick, Garrod, Milnes Marshall, Bridge, Hickson, Lister, Weldon, Harmer, Shipley and Bateson, all men of high repute in zoological science.