Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

G.D. Hale Carpenter
MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...
(26 October 1882 in
Eton, Berkshire Eton ( ) is a town in Berkshire, England, on the opposite bank of the River Thames to Windsor, connected to it by Windsor Bridge. The civil parish, which also includes the village of Eton Wick two miles west of the town, had a population of 4 ...
– 30 January 1953 in
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
) was a British
entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...
and
medical doctor A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
. He worked first at the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a member institution of the University of London that specialises in public health and tropical medicine. The inst ...
, and in
Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...
, on tse-tse flies and
sleeping sickness African trypanosomiasis, also known as African sleeping sickness or simply sleeping sickness, is an insect-borne parasitic infection of humans and other animals. It is caused by the species ''Trypanosoma brucei''. Humans are infected by two typ ...
. His main work in
zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...
was on
mimicry In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species. Often, mimicry f ...
in
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 ...
, an interest he developed in Uganda and
Tanganyika Tanganyika may refer to: Places * Tanganyika Territory (1916–1961), a former British territory which preceded the sovereign state * Tanganyika (1961–1964), a sovereign state, comprising the mainland part of present-day Tanzania * Tanzania Main ...
. He succeeded E.B. Poulton as
Hope Professor of Zoology The Hope Professor of Zoology (Entomology) is a professorship at Oxford University. The first Hope Professor was John Obadiah Westwood. The current holder is Geraldine Wright. The position is associated with a professorial fellowship at Jesus ...
at
Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
from 1933 to 1948.


Biography

Douglas was a son of Philip Herbert Carpenter DSc FRS, a schoolmaster at
Eton College Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, C ...
; a grandson of the naturalist and
physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...
William Benjamin Carpenter William Benjamin Carpenter CB FRS (29 October 1813 – 19 November 1885) was an English physician, invertebrate zoologist and physiologist. He was instrumental in the early stages of the unified University of London. Life Carpenter was born ...
; and a great-grandson of
Lant Carpenter Lant Carpenter, Dr. (2 September 1780 – 5 or 6 April 1840) was an English educator and Christian Unitarianism, Unitarian Minister (Christianity), minister. Early life Lant Carpenter was born in Kidderminster, the third son of George Carpenter ...
, a Unitarian minister. Carpenter attended
St Catherine's College, Oxford St Catherine's College (colloquially called St Catz or Catz) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford and is the newest college admitting both undergraduate and graduate students. Tracing its roots back to 1868 (although t ...
, graduating in 1904. He studied medicine at St George's Hospital, London, graduating as a
Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery ( la, Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae; abbreviated most commonly MBBS), is the primary medical degree awarded by medical schools in countries that follow the tradition of the United King ...
(the standard combined medical degree at the University of London at that time) in 1908. He then joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and became a
Doctor of Medicine Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin language, Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a profes ...
in 1913 with a dissertation on the tsetse fly (''
Glossina palpalis Tsetse ( , or ) (sometimes spelled tzetze; also known as tik-tik flies), are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus ''Glossina'', which are placed in their own family, Glos ...
'') and sleeping sickness. In 1919 he married Amy Frances Thomas-Peter from
Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
. The marriage had no issue.


Career

In 1910 he joined the
Colonial Medical Service The Colonial Service, also known as His/Her Majesty's Colonial Service and replaced in 1954 by Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS), was the British government service that administered most of Britain's overseas possessions, under the aut ...
, where he worked in
Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...
on the north shore of
Lake Victoria Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after ...
. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Carpenter was called to service in the
British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
Medical Corps. He was stationed with the troops at the border between Uganda and
German East Africa German East Africa (GEA; german: Deutsch-Ostafrika) was a German colony in the African Great Lakes region, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, the Tanzania mainland, and the Kionga Triangle, a small region later incorporated into Mozam ...
. In December 1914 he was appointed Medical Officer at the fort in Kakindu, southern Uganda. As it turned out, he had plenty of spare time, and spent it studying the local butterflies. "The hosts of butterflies at Kakindu passed beyond anything I had ever see; some days are quite unforgettable". From May 1916 to January 1918, he worked in
Tanganyika Tanganyika may refer to: Places * Tanganyika Territory (1916–1961), a former British territory which preceded the sovereign state * Tanganyika (1961–1964), a sovereign state, comprising the mainland part of present-day Tanzania * Tanzania Main ...
(former German E. Africa), 200 miles south to south-east of Lake Victoria. Here he conducted experiments on palatability with young insectivorous monkeys. He tested the edibility of cryptic and
aposematic Aposematism is the advertising by an animal to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. This unprofitability may consist of any defences which make the prey difficult to kill and eat, such as toxicity, venom, foul taste o ...
insects. This was propitious, because later, back at Oxford, both he and E.B. Poulton worked on the role of predators in shaping
mimicry In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species. Often, mimicry f ...
. The standard theory was that cryptic forms were palatable, and aposematic forms were distasteful, implying that palatable mimics of distasteful forms could gain protection from
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 ...
. The question at stake was whether the observations, which dated from work by naturalists in the 19th century, could be accounted for by
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 ...
.


Mimicry

In England the geneticist R.C. Punnett, and in America the ornithologist W.L. McAtee, doubted both that birds could distinguish distasteful forms, and that their predation was heavy enough to bring about the colour forms found in butterflies. Punnett's 1915 ''Mimicry in butterflies'' rejected selection as the main cause of mimicry. He noted: :1. The absence of transitional forms and the frequent lack of mimicry in male butterflies were unexplained by selectionist theory. :2. The enigma of polymorphic mimicry. Some species of butterfly mimicked not merely one, but several models. In breeding experiments these polymorphs cleanly segregated according to Mendel’s law of segregation. :3. Evidence of birds as selective agents was slight and little was known of birds' discriminatory powers, and :4. The gradual accumulation of minute variations did not fit with the facts of heredity. For Punnett, none of these observations were explained by gradual selectionism. Instead he thought mimicry had arisen from sudden mutational jumps (saltations). Once a mimic was formed by mutation, natural selection might play a conservative role. However, one by one, each of these objections were shown to be without substance. Evidence from field observations and experiments showed that birds were often the agents of selection in insects.Carpenter, G.D.H.; Ford, E.B. (1933). ''Mimicry''. London: Methuen. Evidence that small-scale mutations were common arrived as soon as breeding experiments were designed to detect them: it was a consequence of experimental methods that early mutations were so noteworthy. Explanations for polymorphism were advanced by
E.B. Ford 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 in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested i ...
and
Dobzhansky Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; uk, Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добржа́нський; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent ...
and colleagues, who developed experimental methods for populations in the wild.Ford, E.B. (1975). ''Ecological Genetics, Fourth edition''. London: Chapman and Hall. The question of polymorphism is discussed further in
polymorphism (biology) In biology, polymorphism is the occurrence of two or more clearly different morphs or forms, also referred to as alternative ''phenotypes'', in the population of a species. To be classified as such, morphs must occupy the same habitat at the s ...
. The gradual coming-together of field observations and experimental genetics is part of the
evolutionary synthesis Modern synthesis or modern evolutionary synthesis refers to several perspectives on evolutionary biology, namely: * Modern synthesis (20th century), the term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942 to denote the synthesis between Mendelian genetics and s ...
which took place in the middle of the twentieth century. The small 1933 book on mimicry by Carpenter and
E.B. Ford 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 in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested i ...
was the first book on
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 ...
, a field which produced a series of classic studies uniting fieldwork with laboratory genetics. The book is a minor masterpiece of evolutionary biology.


Legacy

Carpenter is commemorated in the scientific names of two species of African reptiles: '' Chilorhinophis carpenteri'' and ''
Kinyongia carpenteri ''Kinyongia carpenteri'', commonly called Carpenter's chameleon or the helmeted chameleon, is a species of chameleon, a lizard in the family Chamaeleonidae. The species is native to central Africa. Geographic range ''K. carpenteri'' has a geog ...
''. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Carpenter, G.D.H.", p. 48).


Obituaries

* Hobby, B.M. (1953). "Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter". ''British Medical Journal'' 1: 406. * Remington, Charles L. (1954). "Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter". ''Lepidopterist's News'' 8: 31–43.


References


Publications

* (1920) ''A Naturalist on Lake Victoria, with an Account of Sleeping Sickness and the Tse–tse Fly''. London: Unwin. * (1921) "Experiments on the relative edibility of insects, with special reference to their coloration". ''Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society, London'' 54: 1–105. * with
E.B. Ford 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 in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested i ...
(1933). ''Mimicry''. London: Methuen. * (1933) "Gregarious roosting habits of aposematic butterflies". ''Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London'' 8: 110–111. * (1935) "The Rhopalocera of Abyssinia a faunistic study". ''Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. London'' 83 : 313–447. * (1936) "Charles Darwin and entomology". ''Transactions of the South–eastern Union of Scientific Societies''. Papers Contributed to Congress 1936: 1–23. * (1938) "Audible emission of defensive froth by insects with an appendix on the anatomical structures concerned in a moth by H. Eltringham". ''Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London'' 108: 243–252. * (1939) "Birds as enemies of butterflies, with special reference to mimicry". ''Proceedings, VII Internationaler Kongress für Entomologie'', Berlin 1938: 1061–1074. * (1941) "The relative frequency of beakmarks on butterflies of different edibility to birds". ''Proc. Zool. Soc. London (Series A)'' 3: 223–231. * (1947) "The writings of I. Portschinsky on warning colours and eyespots". ''Proc. Entomol. Soc. London. Series A. General Entomology'' 22: 103–113. * (1949) "''Pseudacraea eurytus'' (L.) (Lep. Nymphalidae): a study of a polymorphic mimic in various degrees of speciation". ''Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. London'' 100: 71–133. * (1953) "The genus ''Euploea'' (Lep. Danaidae) in Microneia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia. A zoo–geographical study". ''Trans. Zool. Soc. London'' 28: 1–184, plates 1–9.


External links


Carpenter, G.D. Hale (1920). ''A Naturalist on Lake Victoria, with an Account of Sleeping Sickness and the Tse-tse Fly''. London: T.F. Unwin Ltd. Biodiversity Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carpenter, G.D.H. Hope Professors of Zoology Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford 1882 births 1953 deaths British Army personnel of World War I British entomologists Evolutionary biologists 20th-century British zoologists