Abstract
AT the anniversary meeting of the Linnean Society held on May 24, the Linnean Gold Medal was presented to Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. In handing the medal to him, Dr. J. Ramsbottom, the president, said:“Since its foundation, the Linnean Society, while maintaining the traditions associated with the great Swedish naturalist whose name it bears, has always welcomed to its fellowship the disciples of the newer schools whose studies of the organic world have led them into fields of knowledge Linnaeus never knew. It seemed to our Council, therefore, especially fitting that on this, our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary meeting, the highest honour in our gift should be conferred on a naturalist who, more than any other of our time, has shown himself to be at home in both the fields of the old and of the newer learning. The founders of our Society were, most of them, classical scholars as well as men of science, and we can well imagine Bishop Goodenough and Sir James Edward Smith exchanging snuff-boxes while they discussed and approved the ripe scholarship of your 'Glossary of Greek Birds' and your translation of Aristotle's 'Historia Animalram'. But, if these works are in the eighteenth century tradition, your 'Growth and Form' is no less distinctively in that of the twentieth. Published in war-time, it was one of the first scientific books some of us read when we came back to civil and scientific life in 1919. It is already something of a classic on the shelves of the younger biologists of the experimental school, and we turn to it again and again, not only for information but for inspiration and delight. In selecting you, sir, as the recipient of the Linnean medal, we have no doubt that our choice is one that would have pleased Linnaeus himself.”
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sir D'Arcy Thompson, C.B., F.R.S. Nature 141, 1002 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/1411002a0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1411002a0