D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum

Last updated

D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum
D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum
Established1880s
Location University of Dundee, Carnelley Building, Park Place, Dundee DD1 4HN, Scotland [1]
Type University museum, zoology collection
Website www.dundee.ac.uk

The D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum is a museum of zoology at the University of Dundee in Scotland. [2]

The museum is named after the Scottish biologist and mathematician D'Arcy Thompson (1860–1948), who founded it in the 1880s. [3] Thompson began acquiring specimens for a museum immediately on taking up the post of Professor of Biology at what was then University College, Dundee in 1885. An extension to his department in 1893 allowed the creation of a purpose-built museum, which grew to become one of the largest museums of its kind in Britain at the time. [4]

The original museum building was demolished along with its neighbours in 1956–57 to make way for the Tower Building, and much of Thompson's original collection was dispersed. The remaining material was kept in storage for many years before new museum displays were created in the Biological Sciences Institute in the 1980s. [4] This building was itself later demolished, and in 2007 a new museum was created in the Carnelley Building, formally named the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum after its founder. [5]

The museum has a collection of birds, fish, insects, mammals, and reptiles from around the world, together with many of D'Arcy Thompson's original models and teaching aids, including Glass Sea Creatures by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka and model and fluid preparations by Vaclav Fric. Many of the specimens and models relate to Thompson's interest in mathematical biology, which led to his celebrated book On Growth and Form.

The museum has 27 specimens from the voyage of HMS Challenger of 1872–1876 [6] and material from several other notable expeditions including the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892–3, the Ingolf Expedition of 1895–6, the Nimrod Expedition of 1907-9 and the Discovery Investigations of the 1930s. There are also specimens of various extinct species including Huia and Thylacine. [4]

The museum also has an art collection inspired by the work of D'Arcy Thompson including his 1917 book On Growth and Form , part of which was funded by the UK Art Fund. [7] It includes works by Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, William Turnbull and Salvador Dalí, an original catalogue from Richard Hamilton’s. Growth and Form exhibition (1951) and digital art of cellular forms by Andy Lomas.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natural History Museum, London</span> British museum established in 1881

The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Dundee</span> Public university in Dundee, Scotland

The University of Dundee is a public research university in Dundee, a city in the east central Lowlands of Scotland. It was founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its early existence, a constituent college of the University of St Andrews alongside United College and St Mary's College located in the town of St Andrews itself. Following significant expansion, the University of Dundee gained independent university status by royal charter in 1967 while retaining elements of its ancient heritage and governance structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery</span> Museum in Glasgow, Scotland

The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology Museum and the Anatomy Museum, which are all located in various buildings on the main campus of the university in the west end of Glasgow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson</span> Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar

Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician and classics scholar. He was a pioneer of mathematical biology, travelled on expeditions to the Bering Strait and held the position of Professor of Natural History at University College, Dundee for 32 years, then at St Andrews for 31 years. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was knighted, and received the Darwin Medal and the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleveland Museum of Natural History</span>

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum located approximately five miles (8 km) east of downtown Cleveland, Ohio in University Circle, a 550-acre concentration of educational, cultural and medical institutions. The museum was established in 1920 by Cyrus S. Eaton to perform research, education and development of collections in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, botany, geology, paleontology, wildlife biology, and zoology. The museum traces its roots to the Ark, formed in 1836 on Cleveland's Public Square by William Case, the Academy of Natural Science formed by William Case and Jared Potter Kirtland, and the Kirtland Society of Natural History, founded in 1869 and reinvigorated in 1922 by the trustees of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manchester Museum</span> University museum of archaeology, natural history and anthropology in Manchester, England

Manchester Museum is a museum displaying works of archaeology, anthropology and natural history and is owned by the University of Manchester, in England. Sited on Oxford Road (A34) at the heart of the university's group of neo-Gothic buildings, it provides access to about 4.5 million items from every continent. It is the UK's largest university museum and serves both as a major visitor attraction and as a resource for academic research and teaching. It has around 430,000 visitors each year.

<i>On Growth and Form</i> Book by the Scottish DArcy Wentworth Thompson 1917

On Growth and Form is a book by the Scottish mathematical biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). The book is long – 793 pages in the first edition of 1917, 1116 pages in the second edition of 1942.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulster Museum</span> Part of the National Museum of Northern Ireland

The Ulster Museum, located in the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, has around 8,000 square metres of public display space, featuring material from the collections of fine art and applied art, archaeology, ethnography, treasures from the Spanish Armada, local history, numismatics, industrial archaeology, botany, zoology and geology. It is the largest museum in Northern Ireland, and one of the components of National Museums Northern Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy</span> Natural history museum in London, England

The Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy is a natural history museum that is part of University College London in London, England. It was established by Robert Edmond Grant in 1828 as a teaching collection of zoological specimens and material for dissection. It is one of the oldest natural history collections in the UK, and is the last remaining university natural history museum in London. Notable specimens and objects held by the museum include a rare quagga skeleton, thylacine specimens, dodo bones and Blaschka glass models.

Sir Charles Maurice Yonge, CBE, FRS FRSE was an English marine zoologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design</span>

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) is part of the University of Dundee in Dundee, Scotland. It is ranked as one of the top schools of art and design in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Evolution of Uppsala University</span> Natural history museum in Uppsala, Sweden

The Museum of Evolution of Uppsala University is a natural history museum in Sweden containing the largest fossil collection in Scandinavia. The number of items in today's collection, which spans zoological, paleontological and mineralogical specimens, is approximately 5 million unique pieces, of which only a fraction are exhibited. Expeditions to China in the 20th century unearthed numerous unique paleontological treasures. The museum's collection contains three teeth of the Peking Man, found by paleontologist Otto Zdansky during an expedition to Zhoukoudian in 1921. Due to its large collection of type specimens the museum is an important establishment in the field of biological systematics, and it maintains an active exchange with other scientific institutions worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambridge University Museum of Zoology</span> University Museum in Downing Street, Cambridge.

The University Museum of Zoology is a museum of the University of Cambridge and part of the research community of the Department of Zoology. The public is welcome and admission is free (2018). The Museum of Zoology is in the David Attenborough Building on the New Museums Site, just north of Downing Street in central Cambridge, England. The building also provides a home for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a biodiversity project.

The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology study published in a three- to five-year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Zoology, University of Oxford</span>

The Department of Zoology was a former science department in the University of Oxford's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division founded in 1860. From 1 August 2022 its functionality merged with the Department of Plant Sciences to become the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peabody Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA

The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is among the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh, the early paleontologist. Most known to the public for its Great Hall of Dinosaurs, which includes a mounted juvenile Brontosaurus and the 110-foot-long (34 m) mural The Age of Reptiles, it also has permanent exhibits dedicated to human and mammal evolution; wildlife dioramas; Egyptian artifacts; and the birds, minerals and Native Americans of Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Lomas</span> British artist

Andy Lomas is a British artist with a mathematical background, formerly a television and film CG supervisor and more recently a contemporary digital artist, with a special interest in morphogenesis using mathematical morphology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glass sea creatures</span> 19th-century models

The glass sea creatures are works of glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. The artistic predecessors of the Glass Flowers, the sea creatures were the output of the Blaschkas' successful mail-order business of supplying museums and private collectors around the world with sets of glass models of marine invertebrates.

The School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee conducts research into the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying human health and disease.

Kate Gillian Storey is a developmental biologist and head of Division of Cell & Developmental Biology at University of Dundee.

References

  1. "University of Dundee, D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum". www.dundeecity.gov.uk. UK: Dundee City Council. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  2. "D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum". TripAdvisor . Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  3. "D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum". www.list.co.uk. UK: The List. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 Jarron, Matthew; Caudwell, Cathy (2010). D’Arcy Thompson and his Zoology Museum in Dundee. University of Dundee.
  5. "Zoology : Museum : University of Dundee". www.dundee.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  6. "D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, University of Dundee Museum Services". www.hmschallenger.net. HMS Challenger. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  7. "D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum-Renew : Museum : University of Dundee". www.dundee.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 January 2021.

Coordinates: 56°27′28″N2°58′43″W / 56.45778°N 2.97861°W / 56.45778; -2.97861