Wilfred Eade Agar FRS (27 April 1882 – 14 July 1951) was an Anglo-Australian

zoologist 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 kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

. Agar was born in Wimbledon,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. He was educated at

Sedbergh School Sedbergh School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) in the town of Sedbergh in Cumbria, in North West England. It comprises a junior school for children aged 4 to 13 and the main school for 13 to 18 year olds. I ...

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

, and at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, where he read zoology. He served at Gallipoli in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In 1919, he accepted the chair of zoology at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

; his notable projects concerned

marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a ...

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

s and

inheritance Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officia ...

in cattle. He successfully challenged the

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 ...

findings of William McDougall relating to the inheritance of the effects of training in rats. In 1938 Agar was elected president of the Eugenics Society of Victoria. He said "it was a disastrous state of affairs that size of families was usually in inverse ratio to intelligence." Agar was awarded the

Clarke Medal The Clarke Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of New South Wales, the oldest learned society in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, for distinguished work in the Natural sciences. The medal is named in honour of the Reverend William Branw ...

by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1944 and elected a

Foreign Member of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematic ...

. Agar Street in the Canberra suburb of

Bruce The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been ...

was dedicated in his name. Agar was the author of the book ''A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism'' (1943). The book was based on the system of Whitehead's philosophy of the organism and argued for a form panpsychism.''A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism by W. E. Agar''. (1953). A. R. Bios. Vol. 24, No. 1. pp. 63-64

Publications

*''Experiments on Inheritance in Parthenogenesis'' (1914) *''Cytology: With Special Reference to the Metazoan Nucleus'' (1920) *''Science and Human Welfare'' (1943)
''A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism''
(1943, 1951)

References

External links

* 1882 births 1951 deaths Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Glasgow Critics of Lamarckism Fellows of the Royal Society Panpsychism People from Wimbledon, London 20th-century Australian zoologists {{Australia-scientist-stub