Post by nomad on Apr 9, 2016 6:36:16 GMT
Edmund Brisco Ford (1901-1988) was a ecological geneticist, a leading figure in the world of evolutionary biology . His 'Butterflies and Moths' volumes in the New Naturalist series changed the way that many perceive lepidoptera, they were seminal works unlike their predecessors whose volumes were collector's identification and locality guides. Ford was a keen butterfly collector, and wrote that his butterfly book was a memorial to his father H.D. Ford with whom he collected butterflies for Thirty Years.
Ford was a Lecturer of Genetics at the the department of Zoology at the University Museum and later headed his own section, the Oxford School of Ecological Genetics. He liked to be called Henry after the American automobile manufacture was to some an odd fellow in his eccentricity. He disliked women so much that when they were going to be admitted to his fabled 'All Souls Oxford College' he wrote a strong protest letter, genetics in his mind, even come into play where the fair homosapien sexes were concerned. When only female students attended one of his lectures, He said out loud " I see no one has turned up ". One woman that he did have time for was Miriam Rothschild. That great Rothschild entomologist wrote of her first meeting with Ford.
" After a moment's silence there was rather a plaintive long drawn out cry "Come in!" I opened the door and found an empty room. I looked around nervously - not a soul to be seen, but a frightful neatness pervaded everything. Each single object, from paper knife to medical Genetics was in the right place. Each curtain hung in a predestined fold...the sight of this distilled essence of neatness and order took my breath away. I stood there probably with my mouth open, trying to reconcile this vacant room with that ghostly cry - had I dreamed it - when suddenly Professor Ford appeared from underneath his desk like a graceful fakir emerging from a grave. Apparently he had been sitting cross legged on the floor in the well of his writing table, lost in thought, but held out his hand to me in a most affable manner ..." My dear Mrs Lane (her married name)- I didn't know it was you”.' You never have to ask a great man for an explanation".
As far as butterflies and moths were concerned, Ford's was a pioneer in applied genetic experiments . However, there were whispers that Ford would sometimes get exactly the right result when it was needed. In her controversial book ' Moths and Men Intrigue, Tragedy & the Peppered Moth (2002), Judith Hooper wrote " Although E.B. Ford was known as a stickler for accuracy, meticulous to a fault, there had been remours circulating that the final counts of the spots of maniola jurtina butterflies did not match the scoring sheets that were found in the inn's waste basket. Then there were Henry's fabled breeding experiments from the 1940s, when he crossed Scarlet Tiger phenotypes and supposedly demonstrated the evolution dominance. The normal practice is to save the ' breeding material', the pinned specimens from each generation, as a record. ' One would expect that people would keep their material and give it to a museum,' Clake tells me, " he actually destroyed it". Did Henry really accomplish a complete ' dominance breakdown', with a full range of intergradations as he claimed, or had he merely said he did'.
Bryan C. Clake who questioned some of E.B. Fords experiment results in an unpublished paper was a graduate student at the Oxford School of Ecological Genetics from 1955- 1959 and later an Emeritus Professor of Genetics at the University of Nottingham.
The following is from Wikipedia
Ford was the supervisor of Bernard Kettlewell during Kettlewell's famous experiments on the evolution of melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia.
The entomologist Michael Majerus discussed criticisms that had been made of Kettlewell's experimental methods in his 1998 book Melanism: Evolution in Action. This book was misrepresented in reviews, and the story was picked up by creationist campaigners. In her controversial book Of Moths and Men, Judith Hooper (2002) gave a critical account of Ford's supervision and relationship with Kettlewell, and implied that the work was fraudulent or at least incompetent. Careful studies of Kettlewell's surviving papers by Rudge (2005) and Young (2004) found Hooper's suggestion of fraud to be unjustified, and that "Hooper does not provide one shred of evidence to support this serious allegation". Majerus himself described Of Moths and Men as "littered with errors, misrepresentations, misinterpretations and falsehoods". He concludes
"If you wade through the 200+ papers written about melanism in the peppered moth, it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that natural selection through the agent of differential bird predation is largely responsible for the rise and fall of carbonaria".
Kettlewell and Helen Spurway, then the graduate student (and later the wife) of J.B.S. Haldane, were known to have shocked Ford by catching live moths as they flitted around a light, popping them in their mouths, and eating them whole. Haldane, who did not like Ford, was of the opinion that Ford and Kettlewell had attempted to capitalize on the supposed evolutionary adaptation of the main two variants of the peppered moth, for which Haldane, as early as 1924, had predicted the statistical probability of rate of change from light to melanic forms as an example of classic Mendelian genetics. In 1961, Haldane and Spurway talked to Canadian lepidopterist Gary Botting about the peppered moth and the unlikelihood of Ford and Kettlewell obtaining results that approximated Haldane's 1924 statistical calculations so closely. Botting already regarded the case of the peppered moth as tantamount to belief in Lamarckian evolution, and was of the opinion that some genetic mechanism other than bird predation was at work".
Michael Majerus, British geneticist and Professor of Evolution of Cambridge University, spent several hours being interviewed by Hooper for her book. His own Moth volume was published in the New Naturalist series in 2002.
E.B. Ford.
Ford was a Lecturer of Genetics at the the department of Zoology at the University Museum and later headed his own section, the Oxford School of Ecological Genetics. He liked to be called Henry after the American automobile manufacture was to some an odd fellow in his eccentricity. He disliked women so much that when they were going to be admitted to his fabled 'All Souls Oxford College' he wrote a strong protest letter, genetics in his mind, even come into play where the fair homosapien sexes were concerned. When only female students attended one of his lectures, He said out loud " I see no one has turned up ". One woman that he did have time for was Miriam Rothschild. That great Rothschild entomologist wrote of her first meeting with Ford.
" After a moment's silence there was rather a plaintive long drawn out cry "Come in!" I opened the door and found an empty room. I looked around nervously - not a soul to be seen, but a frightful neatness pervaded everything. Each single object, from paper knife to medical Genetics was in the right place. Each curtain hung in a predestined fold...the sight of this distilled essence of neatness and order took my breath away. I stood there probably with my mouth open, trying to reconcile this vacant room with that ghostly cry - had I dreamed it - when suddenly Professor Ford appeared from underneath his desk like a graceful fakir emerging from a grave. Apparently he had been sitting cross legged on the floor in the well of his writing table, lost in thought, but held out his hand to me in a most affable manner ..." My dear Mrs Lane (her married name)- I didn't know it was you”.' You never have to ask a great man for an explanation".
As far as butterflies and moths were concerned, Ford's was a pioneer in applied genetic experiments . However, there were whispers that Ford would sometimes get exactly the right result when it was needed. In her controversial book ' Moths and Men Intrigue, Tragedy & the Peppered Moth (2002), Judith Hooper wrote " Although E.B. Ford was known as a stickler for accuracy, meticulous to a fault, there had been remours circulating that the final counts of the spots of maniola jurtina butterflies did not match the scoring sheets that were found in the inn's waste basket. Then there were Henry's fabled breeding experiments from the 1940s, when he crossed Scarlet Tiger phenotypes and supposedly demonstrated the evolution dominance. The normal practice is to save the ' breeding material', the pinned specimens from each generation, as a record. ' One would expect that people would keep their material and give it to a museum,' Clake tells me, " he actually destroyed it". Did Henry really accomplish a complete ' dominance breakdown', with a full range of intergradations as he claimed, or had he merely said he did'.
Bryan C. Clake who questioned some of E.B. Fords experiment results in an unpublished paper was a graduate student at the Oxford School of Ecological Genetics from 1955- 1959 and later an Emeritus Professor of Genetics at the University of Nottingham.
The following is from Wikipedia
Ford was the supervisor of Bernard Kettlewell during Kettlewell's famous experiments on the evolution of melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia.
The entomologist Michael Majerus discussed criticisms that had been made of Kettlewell's experimental methods in his 1998 book Melanism: Evolution in Action. This book was misrepresented in reviews, and the story was picked up by creationist campaigners. In her controversial book Of Moths and Men, Judith Hooper (2002) gave a critical account of Ford's supervision and relationship with Kettlewell, and implied that the work was fraudulent or at least incompetent. Careful studies of Kettlewell's surviving papers by Rudge (2005) and Young (2004) found Hooper's suggestion of fraud to be unjustified, and that "Hooper does not provide one shred of evidence to support this serious allegation". Majerus himself described Of Moths and Men as "littered with errors, misrepresentations, misinterpretations and falsehoods". He concludes
"If you wade through the 200+ papers written about melanism in the peppered moth, it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that natural selection through the agent of differential bird predation is largely responsible for the rise and fall of carbonaria".
Kettlewell and Helen Spurway, then the graduate student (and later the wife) of J.B.S. Haldane, were known to have shocked Ford by catching live moths as they flitted around a light, popping them in their mouths, and eating them whole. Haldane, who did not like Ford, was of the opinion that Ford and Kettlewell had attempted to capitalize on the supposed evolutionary adaptation of the main two variants of the peppered moth, for which Haldane, as early as 1924, had predicted the statistical probability of rate of change from light to melanic forms as an example of classic Mendelian genetics. In 1961, Haldane and Spurway talked to Canadian lepidopterist Gary Botting about the peppered moth and the unlikelihood of Ford and Kettlewell obtaining results that approximated Haldane's 1924 statistical calculations so closely. Botting already regarded the case of the peppered moth as tantamount to belief in Lamarckian evolution, and was of the opinion that some genetic mechanism other than bird predation was at work".
Michael Majerus, British geneticist and Professor of Evolution of Cambridge University, spent several hours being interviewed by Hooper for her book. His own Moth volume was published in the New Naturalist series in 2002.
E.B. Ford.