Helen Spurway (12 June 1915 – 15 February 1978) was a British
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
and the second 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 ...
. She emigrated to India in 1957 along with him and conducted research in field biology with
Krishna Dronamraju
Dronamraju Krishna Rao (14 January 1937 – 3 December 2020) was an Indian-born geneticist and president of the Foundation for Genetic Research in Houston, Texas. He was born in Pithapuram, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. One focus of hi ...
,
Suresh Jayakar, and others. Sometimes known as Helen Spurway-Haldane.
Life and career
Spurway was born in 1915 in the London borough of Wandsworth, the daughter of Frank Spurway and Kate Lea, who were employees of the Post Office, as a telegraphist and a telegraphist and postal clerk.
She obtained her Ph.D. in genetics in 1938 at
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
under the supervision of Haldane, whom she met as an undergraduate and married in 1945. Her early research was in the genetics of ''
Drosophila subobscura
''Drosophila subobscura'' is a species of fruit fly in the family Drosophilidae. Originally found around the Mediterranean, it has spread to most of Europe and the Near East. It has been introduced into the west coasts of Canada, the United Stat ...
'', but later switched to the reproductive biology of the guppy, ''
Lebistes reticulatus
The guppy (), also known as millionfish and rainbow fish, is one of the world's most widely distributed tropical fish and one of the most popular List of freshwater aquarium fish species, freshwater aquarium fish species. It is a member of the ...
''. Her claim, in 1955, that
parthenogenesis
Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek grc, παρθένος, translit=parthénos, lit=virgin, label=none + grc, γένεσις, translit=génesis, lit=creation, label=none) is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and developmen ...
, which occurs in the guppy in nature, may also occur (though very rarely) in the human species, leading to so-called "virgin births" created some sensation among her colleagues and the lay public alike.
She and Haldane left University College London in 1956, and went to work at the
Indian Statistical Institute
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta ...
in
Kolkata
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...
. Haldane officially stated that he left the UK because of the Suez Crisis, writing: "Finally, I am going to India because I consider that recent acts of the British Government have been violations of international law." He believed that the warm climate would do him good, and that India shared his socialist dreams. Additionally, Helen had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and for refusing to pay a fine was sent to prison; the university sacked her, triggering Haldane's resignation.
At the Indian Statistical Institute, she turned her attention in 1959 to the genetics of the giant silkworm ''
Antheraea paphia
''Antheraea paphia'', known as the South India small tussore, the tasar silkworm and vanya silkwormKavane, R. P. (2014)''Syzygium cumini'' L. – A potential new host of tropical tasar silkworm, ''Antheraea mylitta'' Drury (Lepidoptera: Satur ...
'', raising them in captivity to test the quality of their silk. In January 1961 she and Haldane, assisted by their associate Krishna Dronamraju, were hosts to United States National Science Fair biology winners
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 ...
(zoology) and Susan Brown (botany). Using a novel technique of pheromone transfer, Botting had cross-bred an ''Antheraea paphia'' female with a ''Telea polyphemus'' male, with viable offspring. Botting and Spurway concluded that the
Polyphemus moth was misclassified and should be included under the genus ''
Antheraea
''Antheraea'' is a moth genus belonging to the family Saturniidae. The genus was erected by Jacob Hübner in 1819. Several species of this genus have caterpillars which produce wild silk of commercial importance. Commonly called "tussar silk", t ...
''.
At the time, the larvae of her specimens were developing black dots, which she attributed to adaptation to their artificial, dark environment in a similar way that 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 ...
'') had apparently adapted to its changing urban environment in Manchester, England. That "urban adaptation" scenario had been quoted in many textbooks as clear evidence of evolution in action. Haldane had himself made statistical calculations as early as 1924 about the strength 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. Cha ...
which would have been needed to replace the original peppered form with the black form. However Gary Botting diagnosed the black spots on Spurway's larvae as
pébrine
Pébrine, or "pepper disease," is a disease of silkworms, which is caused by protozoan microsporidian parasites, mainly '' Nosema bombycis'' and, to a lesser extent, '' Vairimorpha'', '' Pleistophora'' and '' Thelohania'' species. The parasites i ...
, a disease deadly to
Lepidoptera.
Botting, being at that time a convinced biblical creationist and missionary for the
Jehovah's Witnesses, concluded from Spurway's observations about the black dots on her larvae, and from other similar statements, that she and Haldane were "committed Lamarckian evolutionists" who were prepared to believe, without sufficient evidence, in the possibility of rapid evolutionary adaptation. Botting later credited the Haldanes with encouraging him to accept the precepts of Darwinian evolution.
Helen Spurway, Haldane, and Krishna Dronamraju were present at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Kolkata when 1960 U.S. National Science Fair winner Susan Brown reminded the Haldanes that she and Botting had a previously scheduled event that would prevent them from accepting an invitation to a banquet proposed by Haldane and Helen in their honour and scheduled for that evening. After the two students had left the hotel, Haldane went on his much-publicized hunger strike to protest what he regarded as a "U.S. insult".
The following month (February 1961), the Haldanes, who were also irritated by the abrupt changes made by Director Mahalanobis in the social programme of the visiting Soviet leader
Alexei Kosygin
Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin ( rus, Алексе́й Никола́евич Косы́гин, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsɨɡʲɪn; – 18 December 1980) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premi ...
, resigned from the Indian Statistical Institute. Eventually, they moved to
Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar (; ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Odisha. The region, especially the old town, was historically often depicted as ''Ekamra Kshetra'' (area (''kshetra'') adorned with mango trees (''ekamra'')). Bhubaneswar is ...
,
Orissa
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of S ...
, to found the Genetics & Biometry Laboratory. However, Haldane soon developed cancer of the rectum and died there in 1964.
Helen Spurway's lifelong research interests also included animal behavior and domestication, which led to her close contacts with several eminent zoologists including
Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarde ...
,
Salim Ali
Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali (12 November 1896 – 20 June 1987) was an Indian ornithologist and naturalist. Sometimes referred to as the "''Birdman of India''", Salim Ali was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across Indi ...
,
T. Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; uk, Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добржа́нський; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent ...
and
Ernst Mayr.
After her husband's death in 1964, in
Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar (; ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Odisha. The region, especially the old town, was historically often depicted as ''Ekamra Kshetra'' (area (''kshetra'') adorned with mango trees (''ekamra'')). Bhubaneswar is ...
, Spurway moved to
Hyderabad
Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...
in Southern India and spent her remaining years there studying animal domestication, until her death in 1978.
Publications
A partial list:
* Spurway, Helen. 1955. The Causes of Domestication: An attempt to integrate some ideas of Konrad Lorenz with evolution theory. ''Journal of Genetics'' 53:325-362.
* Spurway, Helen, and J. B. S. Haldane. 1953. The comparative ethology of vertebrate breathing. I. Breathing in newts, with a general survey. ''Behaviour'' 6:8-34
* Spurway, Helen, and K.R. Dronamraju. 1959. The biology of the two commercial qualities cocoons spun by ''Antheraea mylitta'' (Drury) with a note on the cocoons of the related A. assama (westwood). ''Genetica Agraria'' 45: 175.
* Dronamraju, K.R. and H. Spurway. 1960. Constancy to horticultural varieties shown by butterflies, and its possible evolutionary significance. ''Journal of Bombay Natural History Society'', 57:136-150.
* Spurway Helen, S.D. Jayakar, and K.R. Dronamraju 1964. One nest of ''Sceliphron madraspatanum'' (Fabr.).(Sphecidae: Hynemoptera). ''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society'', 61: 1-42.
* Jayakar S. D. and Spurway H. 1966 Sex ratios of some mason wasps. ''Nature'' (London) 212:306-307
* Dronamraju, K.R. 1985. ''Haldane: The Life and Work of J.B.S. Haldane With Special Reference to India''. Aberdeen University Press.
References
External links
Lettersfrom
Joshua Lederberg
Joshua () or Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' lit. 'Yahweh is salvation') ''Yēšūaʿ''; syr, ܝܫܘܥ ܒܪ ܢܘܢ ''Yəšūʿ bar Nōn''; el, Ἰησοῦς, ar , يُوشَعُ ٱبْنُ نُونٍ '' Yūšaʿ ...
to Helen Spurway
* Bonner, John Tyler 1998
An Extract From "Memoirs for Family and Friends"Genetics 150: 519-521
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spurway, Helen
1978 deaths
1915 births
People from Wandsworth
Academics of University College London
Alumni of University College London
British emigrants to India