DE BEER, Professor Sir Gavin Rylands (1899-1972)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0100 KCLCA C/PP1
Held at	: King's College London College Archives   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/ ›
Full title	: DE BEER, Professor Sir Gavin Rylands (1899-1972)
Date(s)	: [1917-1972]
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 2 boxes and 2 large folders
Name of creator(s)	: Beer | Sir | Gavin Rylands De | 1899-1972 | Knight | Embryologist

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Born 1899; educated at the Ecole Pascal, Paris, Harrow School and Magdalen College, Oxford, 1917; Grenadier Guards and Army Education Scheme, 1918-1919; Magdalen, 1919-1921; graduated with Zoology degree in 1921; fellow of Merton College, 1923-1938; taught in the University Zoology Department until 1938; reader in embryology, University College London, 1938; Professor, 1945-1950; World War Two work in intelligence, propaganda and psychological warfare; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1940; President of the Linnean Society, 1946-1949; Director of the British Museum (Natural History), 1950-1960; knighted, 1954; retired, 1960; lived in Switzerland, 1965-1971; died 1972. Publications: Growth (London, 1924); Early travellers in the Alps (London, 1930); Vertebrate zoology (London, 1932); An introduction to experimental embryology (Oxford, 1934); De Beer and Julian Sorell Huxley, Elements of experimental embryology (Cambridge, 1934); The development of the vertebrate skull (Oxford, 1937); edited, Evolution. Essays on aspects of evolutionary biology presented to Professor E S Goodrich on his seventieth birthday (Oxford, 1938); Alps and elephants. Hannibal's march (London, 1955); Darwin's Journal (London, 1959); edited Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species (London, 1960); Charles Darwin: evolution by natural selection (London, 1963); Atlas of evolution (London, 1964); Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his world (London, 1972).

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

The papers of Professor Sir Gavin Rylands De Beer comprise notebooks, typescript lecture texts and photographs, [1917-1947]; notably including four manuscript notebooks containing summaries of lectures attended by De Beer when he was an undergraduate and fellow at Oxford, consisting of notes on rudimentary embryology and zoology with sketches and bibliographies, [1917-1938]; proofs and fair copies of the text of De Beer's anniversary lecture as President of the Linnean Society on animal posture and morphology with photographs and drawings, [1947]; transparencies used in a talk on evolution, [1947]; microscopy photographs of the embryonic development of monotremes and marsupials and, at the cellular level, of the salamander, [1945-1972]; photographs and plaster casts of the brain case and other parts of a fossilised specimen of the bird-like Archaeopteryx, [1950-1960]; photographs of cross sections through a mature tree showing growth rings, [1950-1960].

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

The collection is arranged into notebooks, lecture texts and photographs as shown in Scope and Content.

Conditions governing access:

Open, subject to signature of reader's undertaking form.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied for research use only. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Director of Archive Services.

Finding aids:

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Chelsea College Library.

Allied Materials

Related material:

Oxford University: Department of Zoology: zoological correspondence and papers; Oxford University: Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts: correspondence with CD Darlington, 1951-1958 (Ref: CSAC103/3/85); Oxford University: Wolfson College Library: correspondence with HBD Kettlewell, 1954-1972; London University: University College London (UCL) Manuscripts Room: correspondence and papers, [1939-1972] (Ref: DE BEER); Natural History Museum, London, typescript Atlas of Evolution, [1962], and correspondence with WR Dawson, 1947-1961 (167 items) (Ref: L MSS DEB, L MSS DAWS A); Rice University: Woodson Research Center: correspondence with Sir Julian Huxley (65 items), 1921-1970 (Ref: Julian S Huxley papers).

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Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Sources: Who's Who, Dictionary of National Biography. Entry compiled by Geoff Browell as part of the RSLP AIM25 Project.

Rules or conventions:
Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
March 2002