| Description | Twenty-four laboratory notebooks, c1902-c1904, giving records of Alfred Dukinfield Darbishire's studies of 'waltzing mice'; another similar notebook, 1904, latterly used as a visitors' book, 1942-1955, by his sister Helen Darbishire. |
| AdminHistory | Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire (1879-1915) studied zoology and heredity at Balliol College, Oxford, and began a series of mice breeding experiments known as the 'waltzing mice'. He continued his experiments when he became Demonstrator in Zoology at the University of Manchester in 1902, by this time revising mendelian genetics with new biometric approaches. He was later Senior Demonstrator and Lecturer in Zoology at the Royal College of Science, before accepting the newly created post of Lecturer in Genetics at Edinburgh in 1911. Following the outbreak of WWI he joined the Army in July 1915, but contracted cerebral meningitis while in France and died on 25th December 1915.
Helen Darbishire (1881-1961), sister of Alfred Dukinfield Darbishire, was Principal of Somerville College Oxford (1931-1945). |