In memorium: Henry Horn

In the acknowledgements section of my PhD defence, I drew Henry as a male satin bowerbird, as a tribute to his inventiveness, artistry and intelligence. By analogy, bowerbirds are also much less personally showy than their posturing relatives, the birds of paradise. Henry is easily the most unassuming yet brilliant people I have ever known.

He is also a great inspiration to those who are equally inspired by the art in science and nature as by the nature of art. There is no better embodiment of a Renaissance man than Henry Horn. Inventor, naturalist, mathematician, artist, poet, musician, craftsman, beloved teacher, environmentalist, humorist, lifelong explorer of the natural world.

I have never met another person who so genuinely enjoyed sharing his diverse passions with others, yet managed to make anyone feel as though each conversation with him was a comfortable, cosy chat between kindred spirits. Henry always made one see the humour in a situation and to think deeply. This is probably because of his consummate ability to do both simultaneously. The door to his office was covered in jokes, often against himself. There was a copy of a letter threatening failure at Harvard if he didn't pull up his socks academically. Also a photograph of himself at a more tender age, with a caption along the lines of "such a cute kid, where did it all go?". Once you entered, he would have original and thoughtful comments on any subject.

Some of the best pieces of advice on writing comes from Henry, and I pass it on to students all the time. 1. Read good writing, and lots of it. Preferably Jane Austen. 2. Read what you've written aloud, and if you stumble, that's a sure sign the sentence is clumsy.

There are far too many memories to list, but I speak for assorted strays and aliens who benefitted from Henry and Betty's hospitality at Thanksgiving. Their beautiful home at Stony Ford was where I had the pleasure of first encountering J. Chester's gallery and the LiWA, short for Little Wooden Animals, which accompanied him and Betty to some spectacular places. I am also personally grateful to Henry for choosing my book prize when I graduated from EEB. The last time I visited him, he showed me his children's books and lesson plans with the LiWA as protagonists, played the guitar, and showed me the new public library building at Princeton, all on top of discussing bird behaviour over Subway sandwiches.

Unlike many scientists of his stature, Henry had a deep and abiding respect for all students of nature. He spent so much time teaching and exploring with everyone, from schoolchildren to lost undergraduate and graduate students, that his intellectual legacy through other minds is immense. Now that I can no longer pop in for a chat, every memento and memory of Henry will be all the more precious. I shall be taking a walk in the woods this Sunday as I can't attend his memorial service.

Why do races look different?

These are illustrations for a book proposal, showing the differences between European and North American barn swallows. Female European swallows prefer males with longer tail streamers, and have selected for males with streamers that are longer than is aerodynamically optimal. In contrast, North American female swallows don't care much for long tails, but prefer their males bright orange below. As a result, American barn swallow males have shorter tails but brighter bellies than their European counterparts. In the Descent of Man, Darwin first proposed this idea of the arbitrariness of female mating preferences as an explanation for most of the racial variation within humans.

In memoriam: Stuart A. Altmann

Stuart and Jeanne as highly intelligent, organised, energetic and devoted partners, parents and pack leaders.

Stuart Altmann was extraordinarily brilliant, kind and full of life. Though I think he would agree that Jeanne Altmann probably surpasses him in these qualities, I know of no more exceptional and inspiring people, whether individually or to quote Stuart’s obituary, as a couple in “rich, intellectual partnership”.

Stuart had many passions, and loved to share them. Some of my favourite memories are of him enthusiastically introducing me to proper mole at an Oaxacan restaurant, or whipping up a batch of sourdough waffles from his own decades old sourdough starter, while discoursing on meticulously labelled varieties of cider from the orchard he has lovingly stocked with heirloom apples. Not once, throughout the making and eating of breakfast, did Stuart ever take Jeanne for granted. This would sound sappy if it weren’t so invariably true of both of them, but even when asking his wife to “please pass the salt”, Stuart was genuinely grateful and honoured to be asking her. He liked to relate an anecdote about how his children would come home from school and ask why their parents were so abnormal as to never be seen arguing. I gather they did occasionally disagree, as he also said that since Jeanne was always right about people, he’d long ago given up objecting to her choice of field assistants. They did agree that marrying each other was “the best decision I ever made”.

The baboon project Stuart and Jeanne began in Amboseli is the stuff of legend. I loved to visit Stuart’s office in Eno Hall at Princeton, where he would talk animatedly of modelling baboon foraging behaviour and reminisce about the early days of sociobiology. Stuart was one of the first people to attempt to study animal societies in the wild. This was so unheard of at the time he was looking for a PhD supervisor at Harvard, that he had to go knocking on the doors of various professors who studied behaviour of any kind. Don Griffin, who was later such a proponent of conscious thought in non-humans must have been having a bad day, because Stuart barely got to explain before being told to get out of Griffin’s office. Eventually, someone suggested he approach E. O. Wilson, a promising young ant specialist who was probably going to be appointed as professor soon. The two hit it off, and spent many evenings in the field comparing notes on the rich social lives of their monkeys and ants on Cayo Santiago. Stuart coined the term Sociobiology, the title of Wilson’s famous book decades later.

 

A pot Stuart made and one of my most treasured possessions

Just as often, we would speak of art, for Stuart was a superb professional potter. He drew his inspiration from many cultures, and the Altmann’s beautiful home in the woods was filled with glorious pottery and paintings. He loved showing me the studio he had set up in their garage, and when he had Alzheimer’s, and couldn’t remember which of the lovely pots were his, he still derived great pleasure from the simplicity of their forms. He brought me to the little studio Jeanne had set up for him in the basement of their new home, and although he never used it, he was happy and proud to show it off. 

The other great source of lasting joy in Stuart’s life was, of course, his family. When not passionately discussing the finer points of their art collection, Stuart would proudly point at beautiful photographs of his family and tell me about them. When his Alzheimer’s was fairly advanced, he was still tickled pink by a photograph he had taken of a beloved granddaughter as a toddler, studying his sock with characteristic Altmann intensity and intellectual curiosity. It was almost a relief that he had forgotten she was no longer alive.

Stuart led one of the richest lives possible, in every dimension. I am proud to have known him.

A memorial service will be held on Thursday, October 20th at 5pm in the atrium at Guyot Hall, Princeton University.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Fanconia Anemia Research Fund (http://fanconi.org) or the Penland School of Crafts (http://www.penland.org).

A Brick Ark?

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters by Julian Barnes starts with a side-splittingly funny, clever retelling of the Noah's Ark story (by one of the stowaway species) that is well worth reading if you have any sense of humour at all. The remainder of this book comprises a series of much darker, rather depressing Ark-themed short stories, such as the tale of a hijacked cruise ship. However, I highly recommend this book, simply for its first short story, which is a gem.
http://www.julianbarnes.com/bib/history.html

"This Brick Ark: Celebrating the Museum of Comparative Zoology's First 150 Years and the Beginning of the Next 150", is a lecture I attended, by Dr. James Hanken, Director of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. His talk title made me wonder what the "Ark" can mean to different people. Harvard's massive collection of valuable zoological specimens is obviously worth saving, and arguably, it has always been under threat because of financial and spatial constraints. The museum is also a brick building. Ironically, a quick Google search revealed that "The Brick Ark" is also a Bed and Breakfast run by earnest Christians in Indiana. I suppose what these two uses of "Brick Ark" have in common, is the notion of providing a "safe haven".

Most of this post will be about the talk, which I found enjoyably, and somewhat surprisingly historical. Hanken is a biologist by profession, and it was heartening to see how much time he devoted to the fascinating people responsible for establishing the MCZ. In particular, the talk focused on Louis and Alexander Agassiz, father and son, and the first two directors of the MCZ. Some of the more interesting titbits included Louis Agassiz's insatiable ambition to make the MCZ an unbeatable institution. This was illustrated by some amusing quotes, including the dilemma over what to name the museum. The Museum of "Natural History" seemed too fuddy- duddy. Agassiz's personal favourite (because it encapsulated all his interests), "Comparative Zoology, Embryology and Palaeontology" was, he admitted, "too long". So the museum was, and still is, of "Comparative Zoology", a name that emphasises Agassiz's vision of the broad, synthetic research in the institution he founded.

Agassiz founded the MCZ in 1859, the very year that Darwin's Origin was published. Ironically, Agassiz also believed staunchly in the fact that every species was "a though of God", and vehemently opposed any notions of transmutation (now known as evolution). He stuck to these views till the end of his life, and expressed his ideas most vehemently in his 1851 Essay on Classification. Although these two eminent scientists maintained a gentlemanly correspondence, Darwin did privately confide in his bulldog, Thomas H. Huxley, "I entirely agree with your remarks on Agassiz's Essay on Classification: it is all utterly impracticable rubbish". And when the Origin was published, Darwin politely sent Agassiz a first edition, which Agassiz didn't think much of.

In a somewhat uphill and ultimately doomed attempt to persuade his fellow biologists, and researches in his own MCZ of the impossibility of transmutation, Louis Agassiz launched many expeditions to collect specimens that would disprove Darwin. His last, the Thayer Expedition to Brazil, 1865- 1866, brought back heaps of new species, which, ironically, provided evidence supporting the notion of descent with modification from a common ancestor. Incidentally, the Thayer Expedition also included the young William James, arguably the founder of modern psychology, who appears to be the only person who didn't have a ball in Brazil.

Louis Agassiz's great contribution, in addition to founding the MCZ and finding funding for it, was to organise the public displays of stuffed animals by their geographic distribution -- something which no other museum had done. To Agassiz, the fact that one found sloths in South America and not elsewhere, was evidence that each species had been created separately according to a divine plan. Darwin and his followers also shared this interest in where different forms are found, because to proponents of transmutation, it was striking that species classified in the same group tended to be found in the same place -- as though they had all been modified from a shared ancestor. As Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection enthused upon visiting the MCZ, "It is surely an anomaly that the naturalist who was most opposed to the theory of evolution should be the first to arrange his museum in such a way as best to illustrate that theory, while in the land of Darwin no step has been taken to escape from the monotonous routine of one great systematic series of crowded specimens arranged in lofty halls and palatial galleries, which may excite wonder but which are calculated to teach no definite lesson."

Louis Agassiz's tremendous contributions in founding the MCZ have earned him a place along former Harvard presidents in the room where Harvard's faculty meetings are held. In fact, he is one of a handful honoured with two likenesses in that room -- a portrait and a bust. Also a great geologist, Agassiz is known for being the first to present a scientific case for an ice age. This reputation for geology and anti-Darwinian notions led to quite a few jokes about Agassiz sticking his head into the ground when the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 came along, and Agassiz was the only one of four great biologists to topple from his pedestal on the Stanford Zoology building.

Picture by W.C. Mendenhall. Taken from the U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library.

In keeping with his father's rather unfortunate attempts to disprove Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, the second director of the MCZ, also spent much of his life attacking a Darwinian theory-- that of how coral atolls are formed. To this end, Alexander also launched a great many expensive expeditions, and he even had massive metal replicas of coral reefs on display in the MCZ. Although Alexander died believing that he had succeeded, Darwin's atoll formation scenario still stands today.

The MCZ's subsequent directors were also colourful men. All of them struggled to fit an ever-increasing collection into limited space, with limited funds. One of the most influential, Thomas Barbour, was disturbingly fond of discarding bits of the collection in order to make space. Hanken's main message, was that in spite of changing political, economic and intellectual times, the MCZ has remained true to its founder's vision in persisting as a relatively small institution with a disproportionately large impact on the synthetic study of zoology.

Looking at the newly refurbished hall of mammals, I felt unusually grateful for the current financial crisis, which scuppered plans to move the MCZ's public displays across the river to a fancy new museum in a fancy new science park. There is something delightfully evocative about seeing musty old stuffed animals in the very brick building where they were first displayed. One can almost smell and see Agassiz's vision of a museum that would show people just how marvellous the earth's collection of living things is. Unlike previous museum events, this evening's reception was restrained and vegetarian-- a very small, and rather fitting price to pay for keeping the animals of the MCZ in this Brick Ark.

Links of possible interest:
Future Harvard Natural History Museum events:
http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/lectures_and_special_events/index.php

Wallace's exquisitely expressed essay on the MCZ:
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S401.htm

Darwin Correspondence Project:
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-2430.html

Darwinian drama

This year, Darwin would have been 200, and his "Origin of Species", a 150 years old. Hurrah. There have been a plethora or conferences, books, paraphernalia and, most recently, films celebrating (and cashing in) on these glorious anniversaries.

With the mountains of scholarship devoted to documenting Darwin's eventful life, and his own copious written records, from meticulously catalogued notes on earthworms to moving letters about his favourite child's last days alive, one would think that it would be easy to find something both accurate and engaging to dramatise. What one does not expect, is an unfortunate hybrid of Hollywood and hallucination-- both on the parts of Darwin and the creators of "Creation", one of the most recent Darwin films.

"The Creation" opens with a sentence claiming to present how the Origin came to be written. However, it barely mentions the dramatic events surrounding the arrival of Wallace's letter, which, by independently presenting Darwin's theory of natural selection, precipitated a joint reading of their ideas at the Linnean Society, and, soon afterwards, the Origin. Nor does it even mention Charles Lyell, author of books that contributed greatly to Darwin's formulating natural selection, and one of Darwin's closest friends, who advises him to publish before he is scooped.

Instead, "Creation" explores Darwin's reaction to the death of his favourite daughter, and his crisis of faith, which threatens a happy marriage with his first cousin, Emma. These are interesting themes to explore, especially as the current polarised debates pitting religion against evolution tend to obscure the fact that many people find different and nuanced ways to reconcile the two, and that Darwin was by no means an evil and evangelical atheist. Unfortunately, one is plunged into a one-sided and melodramatic demonstration of Darwin's mental agonies over the cruelty of nature, his loss of faith and the death of his favourite child, Annie, at the age of 10. By sheer force of repetition, these horrors become surprisingly saccharine and soporific. I rapidly found myself drowned in such a torrent of flashbacks and flash-forwards that it was tricky to know when and where anything was happening -- in Darwin's mind or in his life? Before Annie's death or after? Staged scenes of "nature red in tooth and claw", such as a fox killing a rabbit about 3 feet from Darwin and his whispering brood were so improbable they were funny rather than moving, while shots of Emma staring, pained, at her raving husband for the umpteenth time got positively tiresome. It would help if some of the acting was, at least, convincing, but it isn't. As a result of all this agonising improbability and confusion, "Creation" isn't just historically inaccurate, it is dramatically hopeless.

My friends and I emerged from "Creation" stunned and wondering if it were, perhaps, a creationist spoof. To our surprise, there are actually reports that American creationists fought to repress its release in their country. They don't know what they are missing. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html To paraphrase Darwin badly, there is an irony in this view of (Darwin's) life, with its several creations, having been originally breathed into a few fancies or into one; and that, whilst society has gone cycling on according to the fluid laws of humankind, from so interesting a beginning endless forms most silly and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

In contrast, "Darwin's Darkest Hour" by NOVA is less original, but makes good use of some of the more dramatic moments in the history of how the Origin came to be written, and presents quite a few important historical and scientific points clearly and accurately. For instance, we learn that Darwin did not have a eureka moment when he set foot on the Galapagos, but that back in London, an ornithologist named John Gould presented Darwin with his own specimens reclassified, so that birds Darwin had labelled warblers and blackbirds were actually 13 closely related species of what we now know of as Darwin's finches. This information, combined with Gould's news that Darwin's three mockingbird varieties, each collected from a separate island, were distinct species, made Darwin question the immutability and separate creation of species. If all the finches were formed via special creation, why would such closely related forms so close together in space look so different? And why would a Creator bother to make slightly different mockingbirds for three similar little islands in the same archipelago?

"Darwin's Darkest Hour" also shows evidence of careful research and an attempt to be accurate and balanced. A lot of the props are clearly designed to reflect the Darwin home, from Darwin's copious letter-writing, to his frequent games of backgammon with his wife, and his plant experiments in both greenhouse and drawing room. Both films present Darwin the experimenter, but whereas Darwin in "Creation" is generally retching over dead pigeons, the NOVA Darwin also has blessed (and historically documented) moments of good health, during which he conducts experiments on seed dispersal or bee instinct with his children. One gets a real sense that Darwin was a rather fun father to have, who inspired and deserved the devotion and admiration of all his children. "The Creation" attempts to portray Darwin as Dad, but gets so caught up trying to emphasise his love for the dead Annie, one gets the false impression that he barely noticed his other children.

The only real truck I have with NOVA's dramatisation is the relationship between Emma and Charles. It might as well be taking place in New York today. The couple were close, true, but Emma is unlikely to have masterminded the entire scheme to rescue Darwin's scientific priority after Wallace's letter appears in 1858. Anyone watching "Darwin's Darkest Hour" would be left imagining that Emma was so dynamic, supportive and positively bossy, that she reminded Darwin of his 1844 essay on natural selection and urges him to write to his good friends Lyell and Hooker, asking them to publish this together with Wallace's letter. Although Darwin did indeed write to these friends, and they did indeed excerpt his essay to be read to the Linnean Society together with Wallace's letter, it is unlikely that Emma would have orchestrated the entire effort. That said, perhaps one could allow for a little dramatic licence if an unrealistically young, svelte, feminist Emma makes the whole film more palatable to modern audiences. Charles is also surprisingly glamorous, but Henry Ian Cusick does an excellent job of conveying Darwin's many conflicting emotions without making him a complete nut.

In short, I would recommend that anyone who isn't familiar with the Darwin story watch the NOVA film, and that anyone who is not a creationist trying to poke fun at Darwin or the possessor of a very strong stomach should avoid "Creation".

Creation: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974014/
Darwin's Darkest Hour: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darwin/