Regius Chair of Zoology, Glasgow: Prof. C. M. Yonge

Abstract

PROF. C. M. YONGE, professor of zoology in the University of Bristol, whose appointment as regius professor of zoology in the University of Glasgow is announced, is one of the most distinguished of the younger British zoologists. Receiving his early training at the University of Edinburgh, he has devoted himself for the last twenty years to the study of the interrelated physiology and morphology of marine animals, especially corals, molluscs and crustaceans. Beginning with his memoirs on the physiology of digestion in Mya (1923), Nephrops (1924) and Ostrea (1926), he has published a long series of admirable papers on the functional morphology of the Mollusca, and later on the remarkable functions of chitin and cuticle in the Crustacea, in relation to moulting and oviposition. His work on corals and their enclosed zooxanthellæ dates from his participation as leader in the Great Barrier Reef Expedition during 1928–29, and was later continued at the Tortugas Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution. In all these studies, his interest has lain in function and adaptation, in the activities of the living animal in relation to its structure and its environment, and he has been at pains to link up physiological and morphological facts. He takes a biological, rather than a physiological or morphological, view of the living animal, thus adding greatly to the significance and interest of his results. In the course of his studies he has travelled widely, visiting many of the principal marine biological stations throughout the world.