Abstract
WHEN, now forty years ago, Prof. E. B. Poulton succeeded Prof. Westwood, its first holder, in the Hope professorship of zoology at Oxford, great anticipations were entertained of the results to follow from the appointment of one who had already distinguished himself as an able investigator and experimenter in the field of evolutionary study. These expectations have been abundantly fulfilled; and it is not too much to say that under Prof. Poulton's untiring exertions, the Hope Department in the University of Oxford has become known throughout the scientific world as a chief centre for the maintenance and development of those views of organic evolution which owe their origin to the epoch-making work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Under his energetic administration, the great entomological collection, bequeathed by Mr. Hope and tended in its early days by the first Hope professor, has been immensely increased, and has been made available in an unexampled manner for the illustration of problems of first-rate biological importance. By his influence in stimulating and directing the efforts of observers and collectors in many parts of the world, Prof. Poulton has been able to accumulate a vast amount of material of the highest value for scientific workers at home, to whom he has never failed to afford the utmost help and encouragement. His own labours in the field of bionomics have been far-reaching and fruitful, and have caused him to be known everywhere as the most prominent living upholder of the doctrine of natural selection as propounded by Darwin in the “Origin of Species”. His approaching retirement is felt, not only by entomologists, but also by the whole University of Oxford, as a serious loss; and it is much to be hoped that a successor may be found who will recognise and make it his business to carry on the great traditions of the Hope Department. It is a matter of congratulation that Prof. Poulton, when he relinquishes the engrossing task of administration, will be free to continue, on an even larger scale, those researches and expositions which have had so remarkable an influence on the progress of scientific entomology.
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Retirement of Prof. E. B. Poulton, F.R.S. Nature 130, 768 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130768b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130768b0