Open AccessPhilip Macdonald Sheppard, 27 July 1921 - 17 October 1976
Author(s) -
C. A. Clarke
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
biographical memoirs of fellows of the royal society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1748-8494
pISSN - 0080-4606
DOI - 10.1098/rsbm.1977.0018
Subject(s) - medal , george (robot) , gold medal , genius , darwinism , constitution , classics , charles darwin , darwin (adl) , environmental ethics , genealogy , history , art history , philosophy , biology , law , genetics , political science , systems engineering , engineering
Philip Sheppard died from acute leukaemia on 17 October 1976 at the age of 55. He came to the University of Liverpool from Oxford in 1956 and was head of the department of genetics from 1959. He was particularly distinguished for contributions to ecological genetics, his central interest being how natural selection works and its effect on the genetic constitution of organisms. His genius lay in the experimental approach, whether it was with butterflies, moths, snails or man. He was awarded the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society and the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Philip was born at Marlborough on 27 July 1921, the only child of George Sheppard, the mathematics master at Bradfield College, and Alison, née Macdonald. His father had been a ward of the Harmsworths (Lady Harmsworth was Philip’s godmother) and his mother was related to the Cornfords and consequently, by marriage, to the Darwins, as the pedigree shows (p. 466). Philip therefore had no Darwin genes, and it is of interest that his Darwinian outlook was entirely the result of environmental factors—his upbringing, his teachers and his training—a good example of a phenocopy.