E. B. Ford

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Professor Edmund Brisco "Henry" Ford, FRS, Hon. FRCP (23rd April 1901-2nd January 1988) was a British ecological geneticist. As a schoolboy he became interested in lepidoptera, the group of insects which includes butterflies and moths. He went on to study the genetics of natural populations, and in 1954 he won the Royal Society's Darwin Medal.

Career

Ford read zoology at Oxford, and was taught genetics by Julian Huxley. "The lecturer whose interests most closely reflected mine was Julian Huxley. I owe him a great debt, especially for inspiration... Even though Huxley was... only at Oxford from 1919 to 1927, he was the most powerful voice in developing the selectionist attitude there... I met Ray Lankester through E.B. Poulton. He was already an old man... but talked to me a good deal of Charles Darwin and Pasteur, both of whom he knew." (Ford in Mayr & Provine p336-8)

Ford had a long working relationship with R.A. Fisher. By the time Ford had developed his formal definition of genetic polymorphism (Ford 1940), Fisher had got accustomed to high selection values in nature. He was most impressed by the fact that polymorphism concealed powerful selective forces (Ford gave human blood groups as an example).

Like Fisher, he continued the natural selection versus genetic drift debate, particularly with Sewall Wright, whom Ford believed put too much emphasis on genetic drift. He was an experimental naturalist who wanted to test evolution in nature. His magnum opus was Ecological Genetics (Ford 1964, 4th ed 1975). He laid much of the groundwork for subsequent studies in this field.

Amongst Ford's many publications, perhaps the most popularly successful was the first book in the New Naturalist series, Butterflies (Ford, 1945). Ford also went on in 1954 to write Moths in the same series, one of only a very few authors to have authored more than one book in the series.

Ford became Professor, and then Emeritus Professor of Ecological Genetics, University of Oxford. He was a Fellow of All Souls College, and Honorary Fellow of Wadham College.

Life

Ford never married and did not have any children, and was considered decidedly eccentric. Marren (1995) has a biographical chapter. Ford also had a biographical memoir from The Royal Society (Clark 1995).

Ecological genetics

E.B. Ford worked for many years on genetic polymorphism (Ford 1940; 1964, 4th ed 1975). Polymorphism in natural populations is frequent; the key feature is the occurrence together of two or more discontinuous forms of a species in some kind of balance. So long as the proportions of each form is above mutation rate, then selection must be the cause. As early as 1930 Fisher had discussed a situation where, with alleles at a single locus, the heterozygote is more viable than either homozygote. That is a typical genetic mechanism for causing this type of polymorphism. The work involves a synthesis of field observations, taxonomy, and laboratory genetics (Huxley 1955).

Peppered moth

Ford was the supervisor of Bernard Kettlewell during Kettlewell's famous experiments on the evolution of melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia.

The entomologist Michael Majerus discussed criticisms that had been made of Kettlewell's experimental methods in his 1998 book Melanism: Evolution in Action.^[1] This book was misrepresented in reviews, and the story was picked up by creationist campaigners. In her controversial book Of Moths and Men, Judith Hooper (2002) gave a critical account of Ford's supervision and relationship with Kettlewell, and claimed that the work was fraudulent or at least incompetent. Careful studies of Kettlewell's surviving papers by Rudge (2005) and Young (2004) found that Hooper's allegation of fraud is unjustified, and "that Hooper does not provide one shred of evidence to support this serious allegation”.^[2][3] Majerus himself described Of Moths and Men' as "littered with errors, misrepresentations, misinterpretations and falsehoods".^[1]

Bibliography

• Clarke B 1995. Edmund Brisco Ford. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society of London ?:147
• Creed R (ed) 1971. Ecological Genetics and Evolution: Essays in Honour of E.B.Ford. Blackwell, Oxford.
• Hooper, Judith 2002. Of moths and men. Norton.
• Huxley, Julian 1954. Morphism and evolution. Heredity 9, 1-52.
• Kettlewell H.B.D. 1973. The Evolution of Melanism. (jointly dedicated to Ford and the Nuffield Foundation) Oxford.
• Marren P. 1995. The New Naturalists. HarperCollins: London
• Vane-Wright R.I. and Ackery P.R. 1984. The Biology of Butterflies. Symposia of the Royal Entomological Society of London no 11.

Works

(NB: by date, not alphabetically)

• Ford E.B. (1931). Mendelism and evolution. Methuen, London.
• Carpenter G.D.H. and E.B. Ford (1933) Mimicry. Methuen, London
• Ford E.B. (1938). The study of heredity. Butterworth, London. 2nd Edn OUP.
• Ford E.B. (1940). Polymorphism and taxonomy. In Huxley J. The new systematics. Oxford.
• Ford E.B. (194], 7th edn 1973). Genetics for medical students Chapman and Hall: London.
• Ford E.B. (1945, 3rd edn 1977). Butterflies. New Naturalist #1 Collins: London.
• Ford E.B. (1955, 3rd edn 1972). Moths. New Naturalist #30 HarperCollins: London
• Ford E.B. (1964), 4th edn 1975). Ecological genetics. Chapman and Hall: London
• Ford E.B. (1965). Genetic polymorphism. Faber & Faber: London
• Ford E.B. (1976). Genetics and adaptation Institute of Biology studies. Edward Arnold: London
• Ford E.B. (1979). Understanding genetics. Faber and Faber: London
• Ford E.B. (1980). Some recollections pertaining to the evolutionary synthesis. In Mayr E. and Provine W.B. (eds) The evolutionary synthesis: perspectives on the unification of biology. Harvard 1980; 1998. [effectively, this is an intellectual autobiography]
• Ford E.B. (1981). Taking Genetics into the Countryside. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London
• Ford E.B. and J.S. Haywood (1984). Church treasures of the Oxford District. Alan Sutton: Gloucester (N.B. This is not on genetics!)

References

External links

1. Papers co-written with R.A. Fisher are available on the University of Adelaide's website at The R.A. Fisher Digital Archive. Retrieved on 2007-09-09.hr:Edmund Brisco Ford