| AdminHistory | Edward Bagnall Poulton (1856-1943) was born on 27 January 1856 in Reading, Berkshire. He was the son of Georgina Sabrina Bagnall and architect William Ford Poulton. Before the age of 10, he had already attended two boarding schools and in 1865 became enrolled at his third school Oakley House School in Reading. Poulton was awarded a scholarship at Jesus College, Oxford in 1873 studying under John Obadiah Westwood and George Rolleston. He graduated with a first-class honours degree in Zoology in 1876.
In 1881 he married Emily Palmer, eldest daughter of George Palmer, M.P. of Reading and owner of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuit company. They lived in North Oxford with their five children, in a large Gothic Victorian house. However, Poulton’s family life was plagued by sadness, with four of his children dying within his lifetime.
Poulton was a Darwinist, believing natural selection as the principal theory in evolution. In 1890, he published his book The Colours of Animals which pioneered concepts such as mimicry, aposematic coloration and frequency-dependent selection. In 1893, Poulton was appointed Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford which he chaired for fifty years until his death.
He called the Origin of Species "incomparably the greatest work" seen in biological science and published his work 'Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection' in 1896 in order to show why and how natural selection was the best explanation for evolution.
Poulton is known for inventing the terms "aposematism"on the concept of warning coloration and "sympatric" for species occupying the same geographical range.
In 1935 he was knighted by King George V. He was also made a Foreign Member of the Swedish Academy of Science and Commander (Class II) of the Swedish order of the Pole Star.
Poulton died on 20 November 1943 in his hometown of Oxford. |