Edmund Brisco "Henry" Ford
(23 April 1901 – 2 January 1988) was a British
ecological geneticist. He was a leader among those British biologists who investigated the role of
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested in
lepidoptera
Lepidoptera ( ) is an order (biology), order of insects that includes butterfly, butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 Family (biology), families and 46 Taxonomic r ...
, the group of insects which includes
butterflies
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...
and
moth
Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...
s. He went on to study the genetics of natural populations, and invented the field of
ecological genetics
Ecological genetics is the study of genetics in natural populations. Traits in a population can be observed and quantified to represent a species adapting to a changing environment.
This contrasts with classical genetics, which works mostly on ...
. Ford was awarded the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
's
Darwin Medal
The Darwin Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "distinction in evolution, biological diversity and developmental, population and organismal biology".
In 1885, International Darwin Memorial Fund was transferred to the ...
in 1954. In the wider world his best known work is ''Butterflies'' (1945).
Education
Ford was born in
Dalton-in-Furness
Dalton-in-Furness is a town and former civil parish in the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England. In 2011 it had a population of 7,827. It is located north east of Barrow-in-Furness.
History
Dalton is mentioned in the Domesday Book, wr ...
, near
Ulverston
Ulverston is a market town and a civil parish in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 11,524, increasing at the 2011 census to 11,678. Historically in Lancashire, it lies a few mi ...
, in
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
, England, in 1901. He was the only child of Harold Dodsworth Ford (1864–1943), a classics teacher turned Anglican clergyman, and his wife (and second cousin) Gertrude Emma Bennett. His paternal grandfather, Dr Henry Edmund Ford (1821–1909), was a "professor" (= teacher) of music at Carlisle and the organist of Carlisle Cathedral from 1842 to 1902. Ford was educated at
St Bees School, Cumberland (now Cumbria), and read zoology at
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
, (where his father had also studied), graduating B.A. in 1924, upgraded to M.A. 1927, B.Sc. (a research degree) in 1927, and taking a D.Sc in 1943.
Career and research
Ford's career was based entirely at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. The biologist
Arthur Cain
Arthur James Cain FRS (25 July 1921 – 20 August 1999) was a British evolutionary biologist and ecologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989.
Life
Arthur James Cain was awarded an open scholarship in 1939 ( Demyship) to Ma ...
said Ford took a degree in classics before turning to zoology. Ford read zoology at Oxford, and was taught genetics by
Julian Huxley
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
. "The lecturer whose interests most closely reflected mine was Julian Huxley. I owe him a great debt, especially for inspiration... Even though Huxley was... only at Oxford from 1919 to 1925, he was the most powerful voice in developing the selectionist attitude there... I met
Ray Lankester
Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (15 May 1847 – 13 August 1929) was a British zoologist.New International Encyclopaedia.
An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was th ...
through
E.B. Poulton. He was already an old man... but talked to me a good deal of
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
and
Pasteur
Louis Pasteur (, ; 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization, the latter of which was named after ...
, both of whom he knew."
Ford was appointed University Demonstrator in Zoology in 1927 and Lecturer at
University College, Oxford
University College (in full The College of the Great Hall of the University of Oxford, colloquially referred to as "Univ") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It has a claim to being the oldest college of the univer ...
, in 1933. Specialising in genetics, he was appointed University Reader in Genetics in 1939 and was the Director of the Genetics Laboratory, 1952–1969, and Professor of Ecological Genetics 1963–1969. Ford was one of the first scientists to be elected a
Fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
of
All Souls College
All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...
since the seventeenth century.
Ford had a long working relationship with
R.A. Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...
. By the time Ford had developed his formal definition of
genetic polymorphism
A gene is said to be polymorphic if more than one allele occupies that gene's locus within a population. In addition to having more than one allele at a specific locus, each allele must also occur in the population at a rate of at least 1% to gen ...
,
[Ford E.B. 1940. Polymorphism and taxonomy. In Huxley J. ''The new systematics''. Oxford.] Fisher had got accustomed to high selection values in nature. He was most impressed by the fact that polymorphism concealed powerful selective forces (Ford gave human
blood groups
The term human blood group systems is defined by the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) as systems in the human species where cell-surface antigens—in particular, those on blood cells—are "controlled at a single gene locus or by ...
as an example). Like Fisher, he continued the
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
versus
genetic drift
Genetic drift, also known as allelic drift or the Wright effect, is the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant (allele) in a population due to random chance.
Genetic drift may cause gene variants to disappear completely and there ...
debate with
Sewall Wright
Sewall Green Wright FRS(For) Honorary FRSE (December 21, 1889March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongsi ...
, whom Ford believed put too much emphasis on genetic drift. It was as a result of Ford's work, as well as his own, that
Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; uk, Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добржа́нський; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent ...
changed the emphasis in the third edition of his famous text from drift to selection.
![Callimorpha](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Callimorpha.dominula.jpg)
Ford was an experimental naturalist who wanted to test evolution in nature. He virtually invented the field of research known as
ecological genetics
Ecological genetics is the study of genetics in natural populations. Traits in a population can be observed and quantified to represent a species adapting to a changing environment.
This contrasts with classical genetics, which works mostly on ...
. His work on the wild populations of butterflies and moths was the first to show that the predictions made by
R.A. Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...
were correct. He was the first to describe and define
genetic polymorphism
A gene is said to be polymorphic if more than one allele occupies that gene's locus within a population. In addition to having more than one allele at a specific locus, each allele must also occur in the population at a rate of at least 1% to gen ...
, and predicted that
human blood group polymorphisms might be maintained in the population by providing some protection against disease. Six years after this prediction it was found to be so, and furthermore, heterozygous advantage was decisively established by a study of AB x AB crosses. His magnum opus was ''
Ecological Genetics
Ecological genetics is the study of genetics in natural populations. Traits in a population can be observed and quantified to represent a species adapting to a changing environment.
This contrasts with classical genetics, which works mostly on ...
'', which ran to four editions and was widely influential.
[Ford E.B. 1964, 4th edn 1975. ''Ecological genetics''. Chapman and Hall, London.] He laid much of the groundwork for subsequent studies in this field, and was invited as a consultant to help set up similar research groups in several other countries.
Amongst Ford's many publications, perhaps the most popularly successful was the first book in the
New Naturalist
The New Naturalist Library (also known as ''The New Naturalists'') is a series of books published by Collins in the United Kingdom, on a variety of natural history topics relevant to the British Isles. The aim of the series at the start was: "To ...
series, ''Butterflies''. Ford also went on in 1955 to write ''Moths'' in the same series, one of only a few to have authored more than one book in the series.
Ford became Professor, and then Emeritus Professor of Ecological Genetics,
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. He was a Fellow of
All Souls College
All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...
, and Honorary Fellow of
Wadham College
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
. He was elected
FRS in 1946, and awarded the
Darwin Medal
The Darwin Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "distinction in evolution, biological diversity and developmental, population and organismal biology".
In 1885, International Darwin Memorial Fund was transferred to the ...
in 1954.
Ecological genetics
E.B. Ford worked for many years on
genetic polymorphism
A gene is said to be polymorphic if more than one allele occupies that gene's locus within a population. In addition to having more than one allele at a specific locus, each allele must also occur in the population at a rate of at least 1% to gen ...
.
Polymorphism in natural populations is frequent; the key feature is the occurrence together of two or more discontinuous forms of a species in some kind of balance. So long as the proportions of each form is above mutation rate, then selection must be the cause. As early as 1930 Fisher had discussed a situation where, with alleles at a single locus, the
heterozygote
Zygosity (the noun, zygote, is from the Greek "yoked," from "yoke") () is the degree to which both copies of a chromosome or gene have the same genetic sequence. In other words, it is the degree of similarity of the alleles in an organism.
Mo ...
is more viable than either
homozygote
Zygosity (the noun, zygote, is from the Greek "yoked," from "yoke") () is the degree to which both copies of a chromosome or gene have the same genetic sequence. In other words, it is the degree of similarity of the alleles in an organism.
Mo ...
. That is a typical genetic mechanism for causing this type of polymorphism. The work involves a synthesis of field observations, taxonomy, and laboratory genetics.
Melanism in the peppered moth
Ford was the supervisor of
Bernard Kettlewell during Kettlewell's famous experiments on the
evolution of melanism in the peppered moth, ''
Biston betularia
The peppered moth (''Biston betularia'') is a temperate species of night-flying moth. It is mostly found in the northern hemisphere in places like Asia, Europe and North America. Peppered moth evolution is an example of population genetics an ...
''.
The entomologist
Michael Majerus
Michael Eugene Nicolas Majerus (13 February 1954 – 27 January 2009) was a British geneticist and professor of evolution at the University of Cambridge. He was also a teaching fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. He was an enthusiast in Darwin' ...
discussed criticisms that had been made of Kettlewell's experimental methods in his 1998 book ''
Melanism: Evolution in Action''.
[Majerus M.E.N. 2004]
The Peppered moth: decline of a Darwinian disciple.
(.doc download) This book was misrepresented in reviews, and the story was picked up by
creationist
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...
campaigners. In her controversial book ''
Of Moths and Men'',
Judith Hooper
Judith Hooper (born April 15, 1949, in San Francisco, California"Judith Hooper". ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Gale. October 19, 2005. Retrieved August 12, 2008.) is an American journalist.
Hooper has worked as an editor and writer for the ma ...
(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".
[Young M. 2003]
Moonshine: why the peppered moth remains an icon of evolution
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
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolog ...
, 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 capitalise 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
Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biology, biological Heredity, inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, an ...
. In 1961, Haldane and Spurway talked to Canadian lepidopterist
Gary Botting
Gary Norman Arthur Botting (born 19 July 1943) is a Canadian legal scholar and criminal defense lawyer as well as a poet, playwright, novelist, and critic of literature and religion, in particular Jehovah's Witnesses. The author of 40 published b ...
about the peppered moth and the unlikelihood of Ford and Kettlewell obtaining results that approximated Haldane's 1924 statistical calculations so closely, but the reasoning behind this view is far from clear. Botting already regarded the case of the peppered moth as tantamount to belief in
Lamarckian
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
evolution, and was of the opinion that some genetic mechanism other than bird
predation
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...
was at work.
Bibliography
* Clarke B 1995. Edmund Brisco Ford. ''Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society of London.''
[
* Creed R (ed) 1971. ''Ecological genetics and evolution: Essays in honour of E.B.Ford''. Blackwell, Oxford. n outstanding volume* Hooper, Judith 2002. ''Of moths and men''. Norton.
*
* Kettlewell B. ">.B.D.1973. ''The Evolution of Melanism''. Oxford. (jointly dedicated to Ford and the ]Nuffield Foundation
The Nuffield Foundation is a charitable trust established in 1943 by William Morris, Lord Nuffield, the founder of Morris Motors Ltd. It aims to improve social well-being by funding research and innovation projects in education and social pol ...
)
* Marren P. 1995. ''The New Naturalists''. HarperCollins: London
* Vane-Wright R.I. and Ackery P.R. 1984. ''The biology of butterflies''. Symposia of the Royal Entomological Society of London no 11.
* Teän
Teän ( , sometimes written ''Tean'' without the diaeresis; kw, Enys Tian) is an uninhabited island to the north of the Isles of Scilly archipelago between Tresco, to the west, and St Martin's, to the east. Approximately in area, the isl ...
, Isles of Scilly: the site of Ford's Common Blue (''Polyommatus icarus
The common blue butterfly or European common blue (''Polyommatus icarus'') is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae and subfamily Polyommatinae. The butterfly is found throughout the Palearctic. Butterflies in the Polyommatinae are collectively c ...
'') population study.
Works by Ford
* Ford E.B. (1931, 8th ed 1965). ''Mendelism and evolution''. Methuen, London.
* Carpenter, G.D. Hale and E.B. Ford (1933) ''Mimicry''. Methuen, London.
* Ford E.B. (1938, 2nd ed 1950). ''The study of heredity''. Butterworth, London. 2nd edn: Oxford University Press.
* Ford E.B. (1940). Polymorphism and taxonomy. In Huxley J. ''The new systematics''. Oxford.
* Ford E.B. (1942, 7th edn 1973). ''Genetics for medical students'' Chapman and Hall, London.
* Ford E.B. (1945, 3rd edn 1977). ''Butterflies''. New Naturalist
The New Naturalist Library (also known as ''The New Naturalists'') is a series of books published by Collins in the United Kingdom, on a variety of natural history topics relevant to the British Isles. The aim of the series at the start was: "To ...
No. 1 Collins, London.
* Ford E.B. (1951). ''British butterflies''. Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[New Naturalist
The New Naturalist Library (also known as ''The New Naturalists'') is a series of books published by Collins in the United Kingdom, on a variety of natural history topics relevant to the British Isles. The aim of the series at the start was: "To ...]
No. 30 Collins, London.
* Ford E.B. (1964, 4th edn 1975). ''Ecological genetics''. Chapman and Hall, London.
* Ford E.B. (1965). ''Genetic polymorphism''. All Souls Studies, Faber & Faber, London.
* Ford E.B. (1976). ''Genetics and adaptation''. Institute of Biology studies, Edward Arnold, London.
* Ford E.B. (1979). ''Understanding genetics''. Faber and Faber, London.
* Ford E.B. (1980). Some recollections pertaining to the evolutionary synthesis. In Mayr E. and Provine W.B. (eds) ''The evolutionary synthesis: perspectives on the unification of biology''. Harvard 1980; 1998. ffectively, this is an intellectual autobiography* Ford E.B. (1981). ''Taking genetics into the countryside''. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.
* Ford E.B. and J.S. Haywood (1984). ''Church treasures of the Oxford district''. Alan Sutton, Gloucester.
Personal life
Ford never married, had no children, and was considered decidedly eccentric, although his eccentricity was said to be more prominent when he knew he had an audience; he was also fond of slightly surrealist practical joking. He could be markedly generous to his friends: it was "an open secret" that he made a handsome contribution to the grant of £350000 given by the Nuffield Foundation for the establishment of a Unit of Medical Genetics at the University of Liverpool; this greatly boosted the research of Cyril Clarke
Sir Cyril Astley Clarke, KBE, FRCP, FRCOG, (Hon) FRC Path, FRS (22 August 1907 – 21 November 2000) was a British physician, geneticist and lepidopterist. He was honoured for his pioneering work on prevention of Rh disease of the newborn, a ...
and Philip Sheppard.
Professor Ford would come into first year biology lectures at Oxford University – which were quite large, with about 150 students, and address the mixed group “good morning gentlemen”, ignoring the ladies, who even at that time were maybe 30% of student numbers – they are now 48%. The students thought that was amusing, and decided that, for one lecture in 1965, no men would attend. So he walked in to the lecture theatre with about 50 women sitting there waiting attentively, but no men. He put his notes on the lectern and looked up. “Oh dear, nobody here today I see, might as well go home”! Picked up his notes and walked out. (This story is also told of Arthur Quiller Couch, and has to be treated as apocryphal)(It is not apocryphal - it is confirmed by a number of first year Agriculture undergraduates who participated in the activity).
Non-academic information on his life is hard to come by, mostly consisting of scattered remarks made by colleagues. He campaigned strenuously against the admission of female Fellows to All Souls College
All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...
. Miriam Rothschild
Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild (5 August 1908 – 20 January 2005) was a British natural scientist and author with contributions to zoology, entomology, and botany.
Early life
Miriam Rothschild was born in 1908 in Ashton Wold, near Oundle in No ...
, an outstanding zoologist, was one of the few women with whom Ford was on good terms. Rothschild and Ford campaigned for the legalisation of male homosexuality
Human male sexuality encompasses a wide variety of feelings and behaviors. Men's feelings of attraction may be caused by various physical and social traits of their potential partner. Men's sexual behavior can be affected by many factors, incl ...
in Britain. Ford was on good terms with Theodosius Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; uk, Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добржа́нський; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent ...
, who did ground-breaking work on ecological genetics with ''Drosophila
''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...
'' species: they exchanged letters and visits.
Ford has a memoir written by Bryan Clarke
Bryan Campbell Clarke (24 June 1932 – 27 February 2014) was a British Professor of genetics, latterly emeritus at the University of Nottingham. Clarke is particularly noted for his work on apostatic selection (which is a term he coined ...
published in the ''Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
The ''Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society'' is an academic journal on the history of science published annually by the Royal Society. It publishes obituaries of Fellows of the Royal Society. It was established in 1932 as ''Obitu ...
'', but there are few other sources on his life.[Marren P. 1995. ''The New Naturalists''. HarperCollins, London.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Edmund Brisco
1901 births
1988 deaths
British evolutionary biologists
English geneticists
English science writers
English lepidopterists
Fellows of the Royal Society
People educated at St Bees School
Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford
Modern synthesis (20th century)
New Naturalist writers
20th-century British zoologists
People from Dalton-in-Furness
People associated with University College, Oxford