DENDY, Professor Arthur (1865-1925)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0100 KCLCA K/PP6
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	: DENDY, Professor Arthur (1865-1925)
Date(s)	: Created 1886-1925
Level of description	: collection (fonds)
Extent	: 3.5 boxes or 0.035 cubic metres
Name of creator(s)	: Dendy | Arthur | 1865-1925 | Professor of Zoology

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Born 1865; educated Manchester Grammar School and Owens College, Manchester; Assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum (Natural History), London, 1886-1887; Demonstrator and Assistant Lecturer in Biology, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1888-1894; Professor of Biology, Canterbury College, University of New Zealand, 1894-1903; Professor of Zoology, South African College, Cape Town, South Africa, 1903-1905; Chair of Zoology, King's College London, 1905-1925; member of the Royal Society's Committee for the Investigation of Grain Pests, 1917-1919; died 1925.

Publications: A monograph of the Victorian sponges (Melbourne, 1891); editor of Animal life and human progress (Constable and Co, London, 1919); Outlines of evolutionary biology (Constable and Co, London, 1912); Porifera. Part I. Non-Antartic sponges (London, 1924); editor Problems of modern science (George G Harrap and Co, London, 1922); The Anatomy of an Australian Land Planarian; The biological foundations of society (Constable and Co, London, 1924); An introduction to the study of Botany (Melville, Mullen and Slade, Melbourne and London, 1892).

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Correspondence, 1887-1925, mainly between Dendy and fellow academics relating to the morphology and classification of sponges, notably with George Parker Bidder, President of the Marine Biological Association of the UK; Professor William John Dakin, Professor of Zoology, University of Liverpool; Francisco Ferrer Hernandez, Musea de Gencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain; Professor William A Haswell, Emeritus Professor of Biology, University of Sydney, Australia; Ernst Hentschel, Zoologisches Museum, Hamburg, Germany; William Abbott Herdman, University of Liverpool; Professor Sydney John Hickson, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Liverpool; Randolph Kirkpartick, Natural History Museum, London; Professor James Herbert Orton, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Liverpool; Joseph Pearson, Director of the Columbo Museum, Ceylon; and Edgar Thurston, Superintendent of the Government Museum, Madras, India. The correspondence also includes letters, 1919-1921, relating to the establishment of a research grant in memory of Harold Row, Dendy's assistant. Papers, 1886-1899, relating to sponge collections, particularly specimens in Australia and New Zealand, and including the dredging records for Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia, 1887-1890. Lecture notes written by Dendy, [1903-1925], including handwritten texts of lectures on 'Echinodermata', 'The development of starfish', 'Holothurioidea', 'Class Gastropoda', 'Mytilus', 'Anodarta cygnea', 'Helix', 'Mollusca', and 'Merozoa', and typescript texts of public lectures including 'The stream of life', given at a Citizens' Lecture in Edinburgh, 1921, and 'The evolution theory today', given at the Liverpool Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1923. Working notebooks, [1886]-1912, mainly containing scientific experiments and observations relating to sponges, notably the Challenger Amphipoda and the Grantia Compressa, and notes on the topographical distribution of, and biographical references to, sponge specimens. Two notebooks, 1917-1919, recording experiments and observations during Dendy's membership of the Royal Society's Committee for the Investigation of Grain Pests. Papers, 1892, relating to The Victorian land planarians [1894] by Dendy, comprising a volume of annotated and revised extracts from that work, and a letter to Dendy from Thomas Steel concerning flatworm species. Printed obituaries of Dendy, 1925-1926. Papers relating to the study of lizard-like reptiles commonly known as Tuatara (the scientific name being Sphenodon), [1897]-1910, including correspondence, 1908-1910, between Dendy and Edward Bles, Elliot Smith, Annie Howes and [William Thompson] Sedgwick, and catalogues, notes and photographs of Tuatara embryos.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

Dendy's correspondence has been rearranged; letters from major correspondents, together with draft replies, have been arranged in an alphabetic series of files and in chronological order within each file. Letters from or to more occasional correspondents have been arranged in chronological order in two files; one for correspondence concerning classification of sponge specimens and collections, the other for correspondence concerning the exchange of views on those classifications. Two documents from the King's College Library manuscripts collection have been integrated into the collection; namely a letter from W A Herdman which was added to the rest of his correspondence in K/PP6/1/6, and the annotated extracts of The Victorian Land Planarians which comprise K/PP6/5. The second accession of Dendy papers, in 1986, is listed at the end of the catalogue as K/PP6/7.

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, King's College London.

Finding aids:

Detailed catalogue available in hard copy in the College Archive reading room, which includes an appendix listing articles by Dendy held by the College Library.

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

The papers were transferred from the Zoology Department of King's College, London, by Professor Barry Cox in 1985, with a second accession in 1986.

Allied Materials

Related material:

King's College Library holds reprints from various publications of articles by Denby and others concerning biology and zoology.

National Register of Archives: Click here to view NRA record

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:

Rules or conventions:

Date(s) of descriptions:
Feb 2000