Zoology museum re-opens

The newly relocated D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum officially reopened last month as part of the Show Scotland events weekend for museums and galleries.

Based in the Carnelley Building the revamped museum will open to the public each Friday from 20 June to 12 September.

The museum is named in honour of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, a former Professor of Biology at the University and author of the influential book On Growth and Form which was published in 1917.

"When he arrived at Dundee in 1885 he set about creating a museum to help the teaching of zoology students," explained Curator of Museum Services Matthew Jarron who along with honorary zoology curator Cathy Caudwell has been working on the new displays for the past two years.

"Specimens soon filled every corner of the department but it wasn't until 1889 that a proper museum was created within the original College buildings on Nethergate. He left the University in 1917, the same year he wrote On Growth and Form which was based on his research into the museum's collections. It was a ground-breaking investigation into the growth of organisms and pioneered the science of mathematical biology."

In 1958 the museum was demolished along with other Nethergate buildings to make way for the University Tower. The larger specimens were dispersed to the Royal Scottish Museum and the Natural History Museum, and only a smaller teaching collection was kept. This moved in the 1960s to the Biological Sciences Institute in Miller' s Wynd, where a much smaller version of the museum was created in the 1990s.

In 2007 the collection moved again as part of the relocation of the Life Sciences School of Learning and Teaching to the Carnelley Building. The new space allows far more specimens to go on show.

To find out more or to visit at any other time, contact Cathy Caudwell on c.m.caudwell@dundee.ac.uk.