Lancelot Hogben

British zoologist, statistician, science writer

Lancelot Thomas Hogben FRS[1] FRSE (9 December 1895 – 22 August 1975) was a British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He developed the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) as a model organism for biological research in his early career. He also attacked the eugenics movement in the middle of his career, and wrote popular books on science, mathematics and language in his later career.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Lancelot Thomas Hogben
Born(1895-12-09)9 December 1895
Died22 August 1975(1975-08-22) (aged 79)
Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)experimental zoologist, medical statistician

He created an international language, Interglossa, as 'a draft of an auxiliary for a democratic world order'.

Life change

Hogben was born and gew up in Southsea near Portsmouth in Hampshire. His parents were Methodists.[1] He attended Tottenham County School in London, his family having moved to Stoke Newington, where his mother had grown up, in 1907, and then as a medical student studied physiology at Trinity College, Cambridge.[3] Hogben graduated as a Bachelor of Science (BSc) fom Cambridge in 1914.[9] He took his Cambridge degree in 1915, graduating with an Ordinary BA. He had acquired socialist convictions, changing the name of the university's Fabian Society to Socialist Society and went on to become an active member of the Independent Labour Party. Later in life he preferred to describe himself as 'a scientific humanist'.[10]

In the First World War he was a pacifist, and joined the Quakers.[1] He worked for six months with the Red Cross in France. He then returned to Cambridge, and was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector in 1916. His health collapsed and he was released in 1917.[1]

Books he published change

  • A Short Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), p. 64 (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918)[11]
  • Exiles of the Snow, and Other Poems (1918)
  • An Introduction to Recent Advances in Comparative Physiology (1924) with Frank R. Winton
  • The Pigmentary Effector System. A review of the physiology of colour response (1924)
  • Comparative Physiology (1926)
  • Comparative Physiology of Internal Secretion (1927)
  • The Nature of Living Matter (1930)
  • Genetic Principles in Medical and Social Science (1931)
  • Nature or Nurture - The William Withering Lectures for 1933 (1933)
  • Mathematics for the Million: A Popular Self-Educator (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1936), illustrated by Frank Horrabin, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 1. Re-issued in the United States by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (1937).[12]
  • The Retreat from Reason (1936) Conway Memorial Lecture 20 May 1936, chaired by Julian Huxley.[13]
  • Science for the Citizen: A Self-Educator Based on the Social Background of Scientific Discovery (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1938), illustrated by Frank Horrabin, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 2.
  • Political Arithmetic: A Symposium of Population Studies (1938) editor
  • Dangerous Thoughts (1939)
  • Author in Transit (1940)
  • Principles of Animal Biology (1940)
  • Interglossa: A Draft of an Auxiliary for a Democratic world order, Being an Attempt to Apply Semantic Principles to Language Design (1943)
  • The Loom of Language: A Guide To Foreign Languages For The Home Student by Frederick Bodmer (1944), edited by Hogben, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 3.
  • An Introduction to Mathematical Genetics (1946)
  • History of the Homeland: The Story of the British Background by Henry Hamilton (1947), edited by Hogben, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 4.
  • The New Authoritarianism (1949) Conway Memorial Lecture 1949[14]
  • From Cave Painting To Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope of Human Communication (1949)
  • Chance and Choice by Cardpack and Chessboard (1950)
  • Man Must Measure: The Wonderful World of Mathematics (1955)
  • Statistical theory. The relationship of probability, credibility and error. An examination of the contemporary crisis in statistical theory from a behaviorist viewpoint (1957)
  • The Wonderful World Of Energy (1957)[15]
  • The Signs of Civilisation (1959)
  • The Wonderful World of Communication (1959)
  • Mathematics in the Making (1960)
  • Essential World English (1963) with Jane Hogben and Maureen Cartwright
  • Science in Authority: Essays (1963)
  • The Mother Tongue (1964)
  • Whales for the Welsh — A Tale of War and Peace with Notes for those who Teach or Preach (1967)
  • Beginnings and Blunders or Before Science Began (1970)
  • The Vocabulary Of Science (1970) with Maureen Cartwright
  • Astronomer Priest and Ancient Mariner (1972)
  • Maps, Mirrors and Mechanics (1973)
  • Columbus, the Cannon Ball and the Common Pump (1974)
  • How The World Was Explored, editor, with Marie Neurath and Joseph Albert Lauwerys
  • Hogben, Anne; Hogben, Lancelot Thomas; Hogben, Adrian. Lancelot Hogben: scientific humanist: an unauthorised autobiography (1998)[16]

References change

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Wells, G. P. (1978). "Lancelot Thomas Hogben. 9 December 1895-22 August 1975". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 24: 183–21. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1978.0007. PMID 11615739.
  2. Sarkar, S. (1996). "Lancelot Hogben, 1895-1975". Genetics. 142 (3): 655–660. doi:10.1093/genetics/142.3.655. PMC 1207007. PMID 8849876.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Bud, Robert (2004). "Lancelot Hogben". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31244. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. Tabery, J. (2008). "R. A. Fisher, Lancelot Hogben, and the origin(s) of genotype-environment interaction". Journal of the History of Biology. 41 (4): 717–761. doi:10.1007/s10739-008-9155-y. PMID 19244846. S2CID 46322531.
  5. Tabery, J. (2007). "Biometric and developmental gene–environment interactions: Looking back, moving forward". Development and Psychopathology. 19 (4): 961–976. doi:10.1017/S0954579407000478. PMID 17931428. S2CID 412662.
  6. Keynes, M. (1999). "Lancelot Hogben, F.R.S. (1895-1975): A review of his autobiography. Review of: Hogben, A; Hogben, A.: Lancelot Hogben - scientific humanist. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Merlin Press, 1998". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 53 (3): 361–369. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1999.0088. PMID 11624011. S2CID 72372017.
  7. Hogben, L. (1996). "Fifty years ago: Lancelot Hogben reviews Bradford Hill. 1948". Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 50 (1): 3, discussion 3–4. doi:10.1136/jech.50.1.3. PMC 1060894. PMID 8815153.
  8. "Lancelot Hogben". Lancet. 2 (7934): 565. 1975. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(75)90955-1. PMID 51402. S2CID 208786843.
  9. "University of London Historical Record 1836-1926". 1912. p. 432.
  10. Kunitz, Stanley J. and Haycraft, Howard Twentieth Century Authors, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, (Third Edition). New York, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1950, (pp. 658–59)
  11. Milo Keynes. "Lancelot Hogben, FRS (1895-1975)". Galton Institute December 2001 Newsletter. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 16 December 2014.Reprinted from Notes and Records of the Royal Society, London, 1999; vol. 53: pp. 361-369, part 2 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  12. Phillip Gething, "Forum: A whiff of optimism – Whatever happened to self-improvement?", New Scientist, 21 July 1990. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  13. "1936 Lancelot Hogben: The Retreat From Reason". Conway Hall Ethical Society. Archived from the original on 16 December 2014. Retrieved 16 December 2014.
  14. "1949 Lancelot Hogben: The New Authoritarianism". Conway Hall Ethical Society. Archived from the original on 16 December 2014. Retrieved 16 December 2014.
  15. Gale, Floyd C. (September 1958). "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. p. 104.
  16. Hogben, Anne; Hogben, Lancelot Thomas; Hogben, Adrian (1998). Lancelot Hogben: scientific humanist: an unauthorised autobiography. London: Merlin. ISBN 978-0-85036-470-5.

Further reading change

Other websites change