Walter Garstang
| Walter Garstang | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 9 February 1868 |
| Died | 23 February 1949 (aged 81) |
| Residence | Oxford |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | Jesus College, Oxford |
| Known for | Chordate evolution Marine invertebrate larvae Zoology poems |
| Spouse(s) | Lucy Ackroyd |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Marine Zoology |
| Institutions | University of Oxford University of Leeds |
Walter Garstang FLS FZS (9 February 1868 – 23 February 1949), a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford and Professor of Zoology at the University of Leeds, was one of the first to study the functional biology of marine invertebrate larvae. His best known works on marine larvae were his poems which were published together after his death as Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses, which describe the form and function of several marine larvae as well as illustrating some controversies in evolutionary biology of the time.
Garstang was known for his vehement opposition to Ernst Haeckel's Biogenetic Law, now discredited. He is also noted for his hypothesis on chordate evolution, known as Garstang's theory, which suggests an alternative route for chordate evolution from echinoderms. Holland, in Walter Garstang: a Retrospective (Theory in Biosciences 130: 247-258, 2011) summarizes Garstang’s more important publications with special attention to his evolutionary thoughts—their source, their relation to the biology of his times, and their fate in the twenty-first century.
Walter Garstang was born on 9 February 1868 as the eldest son of Dr Walter Garstang of Blackburn and his wife Matilda Mary Wardley, and older brother of the archaeologist John Garstang.
In 1895 he married Lucy Ackroyd; they had one son, Walter Lucian Garstang, and five daughters.
In 1884 at the age of 16, he was awarded a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford and was initially going to study medicine. Under the guidance of Henry Nottidge Moseley, he joined the school of Zoology and graduated in 1888 at the age of 20. Before graduation, Garstang was offered a position as secretary and assistant to Gilbert C Bourne, the new resident director of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom in Plymouth. There he met Ray Lankester. In 1891 he left Plymouth and was a Berkley Research Fellow under Milnes Marshall at Owens College, Manchester. A year later, Garstang returned to Plymouth as Assistant Naturalist, only to be elected a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1893. In 1894, while Ray Lankester held the Linacre Chair, he became a lecturer at Lincoln College and in 1895 he started the series of Easter classes in which he took students on week-long field courses to Plymouth.
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