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Institutions and innovation: experimental zoology and the creation of the British Journal of Experimental Biology and the Society for Experimental Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2011

STEINDÓR J. ERLINGSSON
STEINDÓR J. ERLINGSSON*
Affiliation:
Svarthamrar 9, 112 Reykjavik, Iceland. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This paper throws light on the development of experimental zoology in Britain by focusing on the establishment of the British Journal of Experimental Biology (BJEB) and the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) in 1923. The key actors in this story were Lancelot T. Hogben, Julian S. Huxley and Francis A.E. Crew, who started exploring the possibility of establishing an experimentally oriented zoological journal in 1922. In order to support the BJEB and further the cause of the experimental approach, Hogben, Crew, Huxley and their colleagues decided to found a society, which led to the formation of the SEB. From its inception the journal was plagued with difficulties that led to the merger of the BJEB and the Biological Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in the autumn of 1925. Also discussed are the views that the leading proponents of experimental zoology in Britain in the 1920s expressed towards morphology and how their views further complicate the already much modified ‘revolt from morphology’ thesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 73 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2011

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35 Botanical papers were three in a total of twenty-eight in volume 1, three in twenty-eight in volume 2, one in nineteen in volume 3, one in thirty in volume 4, one in thirty-two in volume 5, and zero in thirty-two in volume 6.

36 Crew to Huxley, June 1923, JHP, RU.

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42 See, for example, Barcroft, J. and Barcroft, H., ‘The blood pigment of Arenicola’, Proceedings of the Royal Society. Series B (1924) 96, pp. 28–42Google Scholar.

43 ‘Cambridge Philosophical Society’; MBA, PBD13. Lissmann, op. cit. (40), p. 60. The first volume of the Biological Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society spanned the years 1923 to 1925 and nearly two thirds of its twenty-nine papers dealt with experimental zoology (Wells, op. cit. (14), pp. 2–3). On the editorial board of the Biological Proceedings were Professor H.R. Dean, Professor F.G. Hopkins, Professor A.C. Seward, Professor J.T. Wilson, J. Barcroft, J. Gray, T.C. Nicholas, and F.A. Potts.

44 Crew to Huxley, 4 October 1923, JHP, RU.

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46 Hogben to Huxley, 31 October 1923, JHP, RU.

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77 Crew to Gates, 3 June 1925, King's, RG1/2–3. See also Crew to Bidder, 19 May 1925, MBA, PBD13.

78 Crew to Bidder, 19 May 1925, MBA, PBD13. For a further discussion of this issue see Erlingsson, op. cit. (11), pp. 102–104.

79 Bidder to Crew, 21 May 1925, MBA, PBD13.

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81 Bidder to Gray, 19 June 1925, MBA, PBD13.

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84 Crew to Bidder, 29 July 1925, MBA, PBD13. Gray took over the editorial control after the first issue was published (Bidder to Crew, 31 July 1925, MBA, PBD13).

85 Bidder to Crew, 8 November 1925, MBA, PBD13.

86 Minute Book of the Council of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 23 November 1925, CPS.

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103 Crew to Huxley, 8 April 1922, RU JHP. In addition to this it is worth noting that de Beer thanked Hogben and Huxley for their assistance (de Beer, op. cit. (95), p. 290).

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112 Erlingsson, op. cit. (3), pp. 167–168.

113 Hogben to Huxley, 25 June 1925, JHP, RU.

114 Erlingsson, op. cit. (3), pp. 172–174.

115 Harwood, op. cit. (111), p. 94.

116 Toby Appel, ‘Organizing biology: the American Society of Naturalists and its “affiliated societies”, 1883–1923’, in Rainger, Benson and Maienschein, op. cit. (91), pp. 87–120; Kraft, op. cit. (9).

117 The formation of the Company of Biologists meant that the SEB no longer had any direct control over the journal, even though the society used its profits to support it annually until the early 1930s. As the 1920s drew to an end, this was not viewed very favourably by some leading members of the society, leading to a serious crisis in the interaction of the company and the society in 1931 and 1933 which eventually came to a peaceful conclusion (G.P. Wells, ‘Discussions between the SEB and COB’, SEB Archive, Archive Management Systems, Reading, AMS 98434, C.Ref 31 (subsequently SEB, AMS-31).

118 Saunders to Wells, 5 December 1933, SEB, AMS-31.

119 J.T. Saunders, ‘Journal of Experimental Biology’, 7 November 1933, SEB, AMS-31.

120 Saunders, op. cit. (119).

121 Erlingsson, op. cit. (3).

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