Darbishire Notebooks

Digitised notebooks of A. D. Darbishire. This material was digitised as part of the Wellcome Library’s project "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" in 2011.

Browse the Darbishire Notebooks

Collection content

Digitised copies of research notebooks from Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire’s experiments of breeding mice with genetic mutations, known as "waltzing mice". A catalogue is available on UCL’s archives and manuscripts online database (Ref: MS ADD 275). The collection can be viewed in person by making an appointment with our Reader Services team.

Twenty-four laboratory notebooks, c.1902-c.1904, giving records of Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire's studies of "waltzing mice"; another similar notebook, 1904, latterly used as a visitors' book, 1942-1955, by his sister.

About A. D. Darbishire

Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire (1879-1915) studied zoology and heredity at Balliol College, Oxford, and began a series of mice breeding experiments known as the "waltzing mice". He continued his experiments when he became Demonstrator in Zoology at the University of Manchester in 1902, by this time revising mendelian genetics with new biometric approaches. He was later Senior Demonstrator and Lecturer in Zoology at the Royal College of Science, before accepting the newly created post of Lecturer in Genetics at Edinburgh in 1911. Following the outbreak of World War One he joined the Army, but contracted cerebral meningitis while in France and died on 25 December 1915.

Links

• Online catalogue for UCL’s archives and manuscripts: MS ADD 275 - Darbishire Notebooks.