Collection C/PP1 - DE BEER, Professor Sir Gavin Rylands (1899-1972)

Key Information

Reference code

C/PP1

Title

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

Date(s)

  • [1917-1972] (Creation)

Level of description

Collection

Extent

2 boxes and 2 large folders

Scope and content

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].

System of arrangement

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

General Information

Name of creator

(1899-1972)

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).

Custodial history

Chelsea College Library.

Conditions governing access

Open, subject to signature of Reader's undertaking form, and appropriate provision of two forms of identification, to include one photographic ID.

Conditions governing reproduction

Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied from open material for research purposes only.

Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Archives.

Language of material

  • English

Script of material

Related materials

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).

Related descriptions

Alternative identifier(s)

Place access points

People and Organisations

Genre access points

Rules and/or conventions used

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000.

Script(s)

Archivist's note

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

Accession area