Sidney Frederic Harmer, 1862-1950

Abstract

Sir Sidney Harmer, who died at Cambridge on 22 October 1950 at the age of eighty-eight, must have been one of the last survivors of the brilliant group of young zoologists who gathered round F. M. Balfour in the renascence of the Cambridge School of Zoology some seventy years ago. At that time the main trend of biological thought was towards the historical or phylogenetic interpretation of morphology and embryology, an interpretation that has almost ceased to interest the younger biologists of the present day, who, nevertheless, are ready to take many of its conclusions for granted. Those of us who are old enough to remember the thrill with which we heard of Harmer’s demonstration of the chordate affinities of Cephalodiscus , or his almost equally exciting discovery of embryonic fission in Polyzoa, may sometimes wonder whether there is anything left to discover that would awaken as keen an interest in the youngest of our colleagues.